


Frequency

by SilkCut



Series: Snapshots [7]
Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Addictions, Co-dependence, Confession, Dark!Watanuki, Friends With Benefits, Latent Regrets, M/M, Manipulative Watanuki, Prompt-oriented, SO MUCH PAIN YOU ARE NOT PREPARED, Seductions, Telepathic Sex, Telepathy, Temptation, Wishes, bad habits, mentions of abusing power, mentions of drug abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-04-13 10:43:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 48,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4518810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilkCut/pseuds/SilkCut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watanuki knows he is now untouched by time while Doumeki remains a mere man made of flesh and bone and will one day expire. That didn't stop either of them from giving into their desires for each other anyway, altering their friendship into something hopelessly darker. </p><p>In the midst of this, Kohane offers a compromise for the sake of the three of them which Doumeki at first hesitates to take as he continues to search for a way to be with Watanuki forever. </p><p>Meanwhile, Watanuki dreams more and wakes less--being consumed by his bad habits both paranormal and commonplace--and even when he is awake, he dreams of Yuuko, as well as the man whom she has exchanged letters and wishes with from her past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On a supposedly calm night like any other, Doumeki reaches his breaking point.

 

  


 

 

 

 

 

> **fre·quen·cy**  
>  ˈfrēkwənsē/
> 
> _noun_  
>  1. the rate at which something occurs or is repeated over a particular period of time or in a given sample.
> 
> 2. the rate at which a vibration occurs that constitutes a wave, either in a material (as in sound waves), or in an electromagnetic field (as in radio waves and light), usually measured per second.
> 
>  

 

 

 

 

 

**157: You Must Hold What You Cannot Keep**

* * *

 

 

 

 

Doumeki sat very still across a crouching Watanuki who was gracefully clutching his smoke-pipe and filling it with tonight's opiate indulgence. The seer's eyelids were almost half-closed as he took the first hit, and Doumeki could almost picture the way that powerful drug travels through his throat and rests on his lungs before Watanuki blew out remnants of it across the quaint, tidy space of the room.

Doumeki has slept here for years; his nightly visits after his classes started out as a simple chore of fetching groceries and any other inconsequential errand Watanuki could think of. Doumeki likes to believe this was the other man's way of keeping him here, and he didn't actually mind sticking around. Doumeki stayed because he had developed a special kind of hunger and dependence for Watanuki's exceptional culinary skills. But, more importantly, they are friends.

It only took six years for Watanuki to actually accept this singular truth even if he won't admit it aloud to this day.

Tonight should be like any other night. Except that it wasn't. Doumeki was uncomfortably aware of the short distance between where Watanuki lay, spread lazily on the tatami mat, and where Doumeki watched, tracing the contours and outline of the other man's lanky and deceptively feeble frame. And Watanuki looked up at him, peering through those new, thick spectacles and smiling that damnable half-amused smirk. He blinked once, twice…batting his eyelashes, most probably, and waited. Always waited for Doumeki to break the silence. And he never does.

This has went on for four nights in a row and this is now the fifth time. Doumeki wondered what to say but realized it was really more of a question he wanted to pose--but couldn't.

For someone who used to be so obnoxiously loud in high school, Watanuki sure is keeping his silence now, more content on breathing in his opiates than making conversation as he still stared blankly at Doumeki with that small smile. When this first happened, Doumeki thought it was just the drug's effect, turning Watanuki into some kind of detached observant as he lay there, not speaking but just looking at Doumeki's face and nowhere else for the next half an hour or so. It's only disconcerting if one is not familiar with Watanuki's habits and overall countenance. Doumeki didn't mind. He watched Watanuki himself, taking note of his new attire which looked to be yet another mix-and-match of one of Yuuko's dark kimonos and his own preferred Chinese-styled garment. It has multiple shades of green and pink, clashing with the crimson and brown colors found in Yuuko's, but Doumeki found that he appreciated the contrast especially against the other man's pale and luminescent skin.

He heard a low chuckle from Watanuki which made him look back into his eyes. Doumeki wondered if Watanuki acquired the ability to read thoughts by now. His powers grow stronger with each passing year after all. That could be the only explanation why there was suddenly a wicked glint in those mismatched eyes. He must have known that Doumeki was just admiring his choice of dress and the way it enhanced the beauty of his delicate skin.

Watanuki chuckled again and Doumeki began to frown. Yes, he can definitely read his mind.

Without saying a word, Watanuki moved to rest all the weight of his body on his right side, all the while still looking into Doumeki's eyes. By now his smile is slightly showing teeth. His chin was on his palm as he inhaled the contents in the pipe once more in the most enchantingly languid manner. Doumeki remembered the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland story which he read in Japanese translation long ago. He recalled a lot of vivid scenes from that book but most particularly the little girl's puzzling conversation with the Caterpillar who smokes to offend a chimney the same way Watanuki does now, the way Yuuko had before him. And Doumeki felt suddenly sad.

He was so tempted to break the silence right now but only because he was starting to think about the price Watanuki paid for a woman who may have been the closest thing he ever had for a mother. Thinking that made him recall about the female spirit from years ago that happened to slowly kill Watanuki the more he emotionally bonded with her…and the devastation in his face when Doumeki chose to exorcise her to save his life. Doumeki didn't want to think of the past and all the unspoken regrets lingering between them as they sat here, both painfully aware of the borrowed time they share.

But Watanuki spoke first.

"Do you really think the colors look wrong together?" he asked.

Doumeki did not show surprise that he was right to believe Watanuki can now pick up thoughts. "You usually know how to mix colors better. This one isn't your best effort, I'm afraid."

"Eh? I thought the dark and the light combination works just fine." Watanuki made it sound like this topic is very serious indeed and needed to be reprimanded at once.

"It doesn't."

Watanuki made a face and blew smoke right in his direction.

Again with that? Doumeki moved his hand to clear the air.

"What would you know about fashion styles anyway?" Watanuki sounded tired when he said that. He lay on his back again and stretched his limbs before curling his legs up so that the knees pointed upward. He glanced at Doumeki. For a few more minutes he didn't say anything and just stared.

But then, he asked. "Which one should I remove?"

"What?" Doumeki just looked back at him, dismissive of the question without entirely understanding what the other man meant by asking that.

"Which of the clothing?" he made a motion with his hand to indicate what he was referring to. "If my appearance and choice of style offend you, I need to fix that now, don't I?"

"I never complain about what you look like."

"Except tonight."

"You're mistaken."

"Your thoughts earlier said otherwise."

"And what are you doing inside my head in the first place?"

Watanuki's smile now had some edge of slyness to it. "You were awfully quiet."

"So were you."

Watanuki chuckled low again. He took another hit of the pipe, finally closing his mismatched eyes. Doumeki now looked away and sighed. When his gaze returned to Watanuki, the other man was kneeling now and untying the sash of Yuuko's kimono. He slid the garment off his shoulders and carefully folded the entire thing to avoid any creases. Without either of them looking away, Watanuki unfastened the collar of his Chinese obon underneath.

"Help me decide," Watanuki spoke, his voice slow and almost a whisper, "which one I should keep wearing and which one to discard."

Doumeki tried not to look at Watanuki's exposed upper body as he contemplated for his answer but was completely at loss on how to deal with this. He's known for a while that on some level he found the other man attractive, sometimes frustratingly inviting, but often unmistakably unavailable for anything more intimate, let alone of the physical nature. Despite the evidence to the contrary now--Watanuki kneeling before him, half-naked, skin so smooth and milky in the dim light--Doumeki doesn't want any misunderstandings and that meant being blunt about it.

"Are you propositioning me right now?"

And Watanuki laughed. He was almost shaking with the action as if it has taken all of his energy to laugh. Right at Doumeki.

"I'm sorry," Watanuki quickly apologized. "I should have known you'd be shameless about asking such an embarrassing query."

Doumeki just shrugged his shoulders in response.

"And what if I am?" Watanuki's eyes glinted with wicked glee again.

Doumeki answered. "And are you?"

"But what if I was?"

"And were you?"

They both just stared at each other for a while.

And then Watanuki spoke up again. "I bet there are so many lovely ladies offering themselves to you left and right already."

"True," Doumeki decided to be candid. "And I've indulged in a few."

"Oh? How many were a few?"

"Unimportant," Doumeki kept himself steady as he added. "None of them were you." He feared of what would happen next after confessing that.

Watanuki only stared with an expression akin to sadness on his face and yet not quite. But then he shook his head, chuckling. He sounded nervous as he said. "I hope I can live up to whatever expectations you may have."

Doumeki could hardly believe what he was hearing. "Do you mean…" he trailed off, unable to finish.

Watanuki just smiled, tapping his smoke-pipe on his knee. "I don't see why we can't. You're here every day. We care for each other deeply. And I trust you with my life. Even back when I couldn't stand you or be anywhere near you, you were always there, ready to do anything that I need or require."

Doumeki said nothing, contemplating the things the other man said, breaking them down. "You couldn't stand me before, that's true. You shout at me, insult me and mock me. And it didn't bother me then because I've made a choice every day to keep you safe. I've never turned my back on that decision."

Watanuki just nodded, his expression softening.

"So do you mean to say that this is simply something you need and require? Just like everything else I've done for you? Picking up groceries? Researching your clients' background? Exorcising bad spirits when they invade the shop?"

Doumeki didn't realize he was starting to sound angry until he looked down on his clenched fists on his lap. How did that happen?

From the corner of his eye, he saw Watanuki reach out. When his palm touched the top of Doumeki's left fist, he wanted to flinch away but there was an intense warmth to this gesture Doumeki couldn't overlook so he met the other man's gaze with enough determination to see what emotions are at play in Watanuki's face. The seer looked tired; bogged down and beat by forces beyond the control of his powers. It occurred to Doumeki that this is just as hard for Watanuki to talk about as much as it is for him. He shouldn't antagonize.

But before he could say anything, he felt the same hand resting on his fist earlier now resting lightly under his chin.

"Do you doubt, Doumeki, that I want you?"

Doumeki's next words were left caught in his throat as Watanuki leaned in and gently pressed their lips together. His stomach knotted with the realization that he is finally kissing Watanuki, and he couldn't will his body to react in the way he wanted it to. He was far too stupefied to really do anything. The kiss remained chaste for a few seconds; just pairs of lips making prolonged contact; but the heat was pounding on Doumeki's head and he knew he wanted more.

He unclenched his fists and cupped Watanuki's cheeks with them. He pressed his lips on the other man's with more pressure, and slightly struggled to keep his breaths stable but they kept shortening as soon as Watanuki's own hands clutched him at the back, ruffling his shirt.

And then their lips parted. Doumeki moaned as he slipped his tongue in. Watanuki made a strangled noise in return, his grip on Doumeki's shirt almost possessive. The seer tasted like the ash from his opiates but with an underlying fruity essence, a flavor Doumeki could not place as of the moment. As their tongues danced around each other for a while, Doumeki slowly pushed Watanuki on his back towards the tatami mat behind him. When Doumeki pressed all his weight on top of Watanuki, the other man instinctively wrapped his thighs around Doumeki's torso, which allowed for their groins to rub against each other, producing undeniable friction that caused Doumeki to get lightheaded.

He had to pull away.

"Why are you stopping?" Watanuki sounded breathless, his chest heaving under Doumeki's. "Have you changed your mind?"

"Of course not," Doumeki breathed out. "It's just that we rushed into this and I didn't expect any of it to feel so…right. It's very overwhelming."

Watanuki offered him a smile. "You're rather cute when you hesitate."

Doumeki glared at him. "When have you become so calm and unaffected? You used to scream and whine a lot, you know."

"Do you much prefer me that way?" Watanuki looked a bit smug.

"Old you never would have initiated that kiss." Doumeki answered honestly. "And he certainly wouldn't suggestively blow smoke at me or undress so easily." His eyes traveled down. "You're…" he paused and found it unbearable to look at Watanuki so he closed his eyes. "…beautiful. Like this." He tentatively traced his fingers through Watanuki's hair and brushed a few strands away from his forehead.

"Like what? Compliant?"

"Open."

Watanuki snorted. "You mean submissive?"

"Vulnerable." Doumeki leaned down and kissed his cheek. He then placed his head on Watanuki's shoulder blade and sighed.

"Who's vulnerable?"

Me, Doumeki thought to himself but did not dare share it.

He closed his eyes and didn't move; wished he didn't have to leave for work tomorrow; wished he could live a few hundred more years to be with Watanuki.

"Careful," the seer muttered. "You forget where you are. And who I am."

Doumeki made a decision then. He pulled himself up and took Yuuko's discarded kimono from the corner. He wrapped it around the other man's shoulders and asked. "Would you grant my wish?"

Watanuki eyed him curiously. "You don't have the means to pay for such a wish. Besides, you're drunk. It's been a long week. And we just kissed. You're speaking in the heat of the moment."

"Have you ever known me to be so impulsive?" Doumeki's voice was hard.

"Please," Watanuki caressed his face with a touch of his fingertips. "You don't know what you're asking. And I don't I have enough strength of will to give it to you."

"You could have me." Doumeki couldn't stop his voice from trembling a little as he spoke the words. "All you ever had to do was stake your claim and I'm already yours."

Watanuki just sat there with the dark kimono draped around him. He made no sound. Instead, he grabbed the smoke-pipe which had fallen from his grasp earlier. He stared down at it almost sullenly and then placed its thin body between his lips, breathing in what was left of the opiates. The tip smoldered for a moment before it extinguished after his last puff.

"I'm sorry," Watanuki answered with an earnest tone that was too devastating to hear. "But I refuse to grant your wish."

"What will it take? What price must I pay?" Doumeki couldn't let it go.

"Something you can never afford."

"I don't care." Doumeki stood up, more resolute than he could ever imagine. "I'm going to find a way. Wait and see for yourself."

And then he walked out of the shop without looking back, not really expecting Watanuki to stop him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watanuki dreams and wakes in intervals; destroys and reconstructs himself in the process.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want my version of Watanuki to be a little deranged and dark than what we're used to in canon. Also, he may have a slight opium addiction. He might also become manipulative and morose around his loved ones. I just think that it's worth exploring because I believe his latent regrets would manifest that way as the years go by and he doesn't get older and die and he has to watch two people he loves move on and get married and raise a family together. I think that would bother anyone cursed with immortality. Watanuki chose such a hard choice without being completely aware of the repercussions because he was young and scared of losing and forgetting a woman he loved like a mother. And now that's he's coming to terms with that while also having his powers enhanced, such a reality is bound to mess up his mind and perspective at some point. This story is an exploration of that plausibility. Please bear with me and I will try my very best to deliver a piece compelling enough to be a worthwhile read.

 

 

 

**163: You Must Sow What You Cannot Reap**

* * *

 

 

 

 

His head is always as heavy as lead each time he comes back around. The slow descent to wakefulness is an unwanted assault to his body that has grown accustomed to the slumber and the dream visions. His limbs are lifeless underneath him for a few minutes. The rest of him is merely a foreign vessel. He smiles at the nothingness of it, the desired loss of all feeling. The silk of his blue and maroon kimono hang loose, its soft texture so transient like phantasm barely touching skin.

Outstretched languorously in the long couch, Watanuki blinks at the ceiling, watchful of the wasps of smoke mingling in the air, narrowing his breathing space into nothing but a numbing composition of fog and mild drugs. He smiles a sad one this time, propping himself by the elbows as he scans the empty room. His skin is warm and flushed, and the heat only reminds him of how desirable he felt under Doumeki's hands the other night…or has it already been a week..?

No, it was definitely the other night. Watanuki chuckles nervously as he sits up on the couch by placing both bare feet on the wooden floors. Time blurs the edges of consciousness, smoothing all the wrinkles until everything looks and feels familiar and unknowable all at once.

He doesn't get up for another ten minutes or so; just sits there clutching his pipe as he fills its mouth with the crushed leaves of his opiates. He takes a small brown bottle and applies two drops of cinnamon oil. He lights it up afterwards, taking a long and ceremonious puff. The tip ignites a bright orange with a curious green hue. Watanuki stands to his feet at last, posture slack but graceful, as he begins to walk out of the room, and steps into the yard outside.

 

**xXx**

 

The hydrangeas have grown overnight, it seems. Watanuki inspects them with some keen interest, caressing petals between his fingers while in contemplation. Did the Ame-Warashi do this? He decides it was entirely plausible. But to what purpose? A gift? A payment? He hasn't granted any wishes of hers lately. Perhaps she can enlighten him herself. With one last touch of the flowers, Watanuki swings around and heads back to the direction of the sliding doors. Maro and Moro await him with a bushel of apples. Now those are gifts from yet another spirit whose dilemma he recently assisted in. Was that a week ago? Watanuki asks the two girls to take the apples in the pantry and chop them all in the meantime. He said he'll be joining them later on. He just has to take care of something first.

Reality and the dreamscape continue to blend and bleed for him as he walks inside his shop again, fingertips probing the alternating wooden and cemented walls as he did. Most days (hell, even months), Watanuki can't break down any difference from today, yesterday and tomorrow. All of them roll by as one giant tide on such a sea he forever remains afloat. It must have bothered him before but Watanuki barely recalls that anymore either. Memory and the present continue to live as one, and so in those rare occasions that Watanuki does allow himself to put markers on time, he always characterizes the past where Yuuko Ichihara still lives; the present where Yuuko no longer lives, and the future where Yuuko will live again. Such as his patience and devotion to the woman he loved…the woman he loves and will love again.

And then there was Doumeki.

Watanuki reaches his destination but then he stops midway into the shop storage's entrance, the hesitation surprising him. Thinking about Doumeki lately makes him forget about whatever current task is upon him much like now. He blinks the stupor away and shakes his head with a smile. Then he closes his eyes as he pictures the events from the night before; relives the aching sensation of the steady yet light caresses of his fingers that only knows how to worship; the golden brown eyes whose sight begs to belong to no else but him. Watanuki exhales, itching for another smoke so he places the pipe between his lips but didn't dare breathe in just yet. He stands there in disheartened contemplation, and briefly wonders why the other man had to insist on holding onto someone he cannot keep.

Watanuki should start feeling bad at this moment like he usually does every time the guilt sets in which makes him wish he has the strength to send the man packing permanently and be on his way. If he could make that wish, he wonders what price would it take to make it come true, but knows even now he would be unable to pay it. If anyone would ask, Watanuki knows he can profusely deny the lingering, wretched feelings, the shameful unrequited of it all. But between the catharsis of dreams and the tiresome waking hours, the undercurrent of truth seeps in naturally; the troubling lust for something he refuses to bless with a name even to this day and yet…

The only name he could afford whispering as he slumbered into another trance is always Shizuka Doumeki. He hears himself think it and is embarassed beyond relief with the way his heart rebels against the confines of his chest, furiously trying to make itself heard. Watanuki opens his eyes now but still sees Doumeki in his mind.

That…idiot--that endearing moot point--that constant if not an entirely fixed marker in an alternate timeline Watanuki did not choose but could have chosen, if only. But it didn't matter now.

Watanuki steps inside the room cloaked in semi-darkness and haunts its halls with the cautious steps of his bare feet. The floors are always warmer here than the rest of the entire shop. Sometimes Watanuki even feels blades of grass below but never looks down to make a confimation. It comforts him to know that there are limits to what a person, even a gifted seer as himself, can know.

What he does know is that regrets are nothing more than pebbles in the ocean, and their ripples are barely felt. Watanuki consoles himself with this, tells himself that starting some silly love affair will make no difference to the eternity he'd face. He'd rather not have a series of lovers; outliving and grieving one after another. His heart does not have any more rooms for that. It's mostly occupied by one woman and she takes up the space so well she truly made it her home.

 _I'm now untouched by time,_ he reminds himself bravely, _and Doumeki remains a man made up of flesh and bone who will one day expire._

_But when I kissed him--and then he kissed me back--oh, we were kissing and it was all kinds of perfect and terrible…_

Watanuki smiles and grimaces all at once at the memory. Doumeki tasted like…his. The man loves him completely and Watanuki owns his soul because of it. He can read Doumeki's longing in the metaphysical level; he can detect the naked longing, so forceful and frightening in its pursuit for reciprocation. Doumeki could have taken him that night and Watanuki would have offered his body for any use the other man intends and yet he managed to resist long enough to tell Watanuki he is beautiful and that he wants to be with him for a hundred more years and will find a way to afford the price to achieve that feat. _Oh, you stupid, stupid friend of mine. Why must you hold onto things you can never keep?_

Watanuki feels the tears coming and interrupts their flow by puffing into his pipe, squeezing his eyes shut to remind himself where he is and what important thing he has to do right now. Once he gains back his composure, he quickens his steps.

Watanuki reaches the shelf where the many artifacts of the past can be visited and he rummages through their contents, pushing aside the other unimportant layers of trinkets and unknowable objects, until he is able to pull out a medium-sized box. Smiling at the familiar carvings of little suns and moons engraved around the box's wooden faces, he settles it down on the floor without a sound. He crosses his legs underneath him and lifts the lid slowly, taking his time, relishing the sight taking a more concrete form inside the container.

Once the contents are fully exposed, Watanuki dips his hands inside, fumbling and touching like a blind man trying to discern tangible details only his fingertips can illuminate. Papers rustle against each other, the only distinct sound echoing in the gaping dark spaces of the storage room. Watanuki puts the pipe between his lips again and inhales. Dim orange light glows briefly, smoke travels upward the ceiling and almost circles around his head, a fading halo. And Watanuki smiles while he reads yet another letter, this time something the man has written in beautiful Chinese calligraphy.

It is still very dark in the room but Watanuki uses his telepathy to make out the words on page. He first became aware of this skill last year and has found ways to use it on several occasions. He has learned to pick up stray thoughts, sometimes visual impressions, and the awareness of another person's mind is both mildly terrifying and insufferably elating. This is why he couldn't resist goading Doumeki the other night. He felt the way the other man watched his body and admired his complexion; heard the blood humming in his pulse as the arousal took over, and how Doumeki's mind whispered promises he can't possibly fulfill.

Not like the man in the letters though. He always knows the impact and power of his words. No wonder Yuuko loved him. Watanuki fancies himself falling in love with the man too.

He now consumes the words as he reads them with his hungry eyes. The entirety of vows and wishes in his letter was an appetizing dish, and Watanuki feasts, taking yet another hit from his pipe, prolonging it this time and the burning sensation of opiates settling almost hurtfully on his throat would have made him gag but instead he swalllows it down. Watanuki hums a gentle melody he does not recall ever hearing from anybody else but its familiarity makes him sad and the sadness makes him feel more real and less of a breathing ghoul.

He turns over to the next page and almost laughs at the affections that come pouring out of the words. The man starts to talk about ambitious plans but something in the way he delivers them completely convinces Watanuki that the man is more than capable to deliver their completion. Once he finishes the letter, he excitedly searches for her response in the pile and almost cries out in joy when he uncovers it. He almost rips the entire thing apart, his fingers shaking as he darts his eyes around the old parchment, pronouncing each word in silence as his lips move.

This is a version of Yuuko Ichihara he never encountered in the days he lived and worked with her. This woman in her letters sounds almost like a young girl of sixteen, and perhaps she is but Watanuki has no way to know for sure. But he imagines her all fresh-faced youth and blooming beauty in an elegant dress as she writes this letter, and decides to keep it that way. Watanuki tastes the ash in his mouth as he takes another hit of opiate-rich intoxication, and he both burns and drowns in the image of a young Yuuko in love with a man who guarantees there is an eternity ahead of them.

She sings to this man in the letters, each brush stroke form not only words but notes to a melody, riveting in its composition. It may just be his telepathy's way of interpreting it, but Watanuki swears there is music every time he reads Yuuko's responses. He listens and allows the pointed edge of every note puncture through his mind.

He isn't sure how he is ever able to stop reading but he eventually does. Watanuki can only remember kissing Yuuko's letter several times before folding it neatly and placing it back inside the box. He takes the man's original letter and tucks it inside one of the folds of his kimono that serves as a pocket sometimes. He stands, hides the box on the very edge of the shelf, and buries it along with the other artifacts. Watanuki only has to inhale his pipe one more time before the smoldering tip fully diminishes. The faint wisps of smoke didn't even reach the ceiling above. They merely settle on Watanuki's eye level before they were swallowed up by the darkness.

He is shivering. The loose kimono might as well be a part of his skin and he is so cold. He looks down at his bare feet and wills them to take him outside the storage room. They obey.

 

**xXx**

 

Maro and Moro are playing with the garden hose. The sun is high in the clouds and the heat should be a welcome sensation to his skin but Watanuki still trembles as he pulls the kimono tighter against his body. He stands there, watching the girls chase Mokona with the hose, transfixed with the water pouring mercilessly down on Mokona as he half-struggles, half-gives up from being soaked wet because of it.

The change in the wind is instant. The sun is now surrounded by intimidating gray clouds. Watanuki waits for her to come down and when she does, she perches on the rooftop, hovering there as an apparition of tempered grace and all business-like boredom.

He greets her, his smile a well-rehearsed gesture. "Thank you for stopping by, Ame-Warashi."

She points the closed umbrella at him. "What exactly are you grateful for? I came here not on my own volition. I thought you should know."

Watanuki still smiles at her as he risks a step to approach her so he can gaze right into her unusually cold eyes. "The hydrangeas are yours, are they not?"

"They were a gift."

"And I thank you sincerely for them."

"No," Ame-Warashi speaks slowly now as if to a child and in her discerning eyes, the human seer still is and must occasionally be treated as such. "Your partner. The grandson of one of the greats. He planted the seeds in your garden and tended to them. The hydrangeas were his gift to you. I merely sped up their growth upon his request."

Watanuki blinks twice. "Surely that came with a price."

Ame-Warashi scoffs. "He came from a well-respected lineage of shintoist priests, one of the few whom spirits like myself are still in great commune with. Does it surprise you to know that Doumeki and I are sometimes doing favors for one another?"

"It makes sense," Watanuki offers, looking up at her from where he stands. "Is informing me about it the only reason you came here?"

Finally, Ame-Warashi floats down and touches the earth. She regards Watanuki with a scolding glance. "Do you know what he's been up to since the night when you two almost consummated your ill-advised coupling?"

Watanuki tries not to blush but succeeds only in relaxing the expression on his face to be a more solemn one. He shakes his head, looking apologetically. He doesn't try to ask her reasoning for describing his 'coupling' with Doumeki as 'ill-advised'. He has his own answer for himself and he doesn't think her opinion would make any difference.

"He's establishing connections in spirit world," Ame-Warashi explains, "The boy has a talent but he never expressed any interest on his grandfather's expertise before, let alone try to succeed him, unlike now. I think he's trying to find a way to stay by your side for as long as you intend to wait on her."

Watanuki has no response so she keeps on talking. "It's because for once he wants to be selfish, and loving you has taught him how to be. So give yourself credit for that, falsely named child seer."

Now Watanuki reacts. He steers himself first before asking her, "Why?"

Ame-Warashi gives him another harsh look he could only place as the kind of look you give someone you're consummately impatient with whilst still believing said person can change his ways.

Watanuki could feel very mild anger sweeping him but he decides against it, not wanting to show disrespect or ill nature. In fact, the way Ame-Warashi looks at him now reminds of Yuuko in her worst moods.

"I wouldn't involve myself with this if it wasn't for the fact that these hydrangeas are inside the territorial lines of your shop which sucks up a lot of energy source. The source, of course, is what was left of her blessed magic, and the flowers are sensitive to power like that. Can you manage not killing them by accident?"

"I'll do you one better," Watanuki replies as he waves his smoke-pipe in a manner that emphasizes his point, "I will ensure the longevity of their lives for as long as they remain in my garden."

"Should I pay a price for you to guarantee that?" Ame-Warashi's challenging tone only made Watanuki smile again to placate her.

"There would be no need for such a tiresome thing," he reassures her as he takes a few light strides toward her. He places the tip of the pipe under her chin, causing her eyes to widen a bit. "Consider it a favor."

"A distrustful gesture," she counters but didn't move her head away or try to swat the pipe from under her chin. Her translucent eyes bore into him, a questioning gaze. But Watanuki could sense it; he can detect that unmistakable wave of mixed emotions swirling, its sound waiting to be translated and heard clearly, and the most prominent frequency he can channel from her is fear.

She fears him…all of them do since he took over the wish-granting shop and embraced his powers. It took him a while to figure out what it was that makes people uncomfortable around speaking with him even spirits like her; why he has to often spike the tea he offers to more susceptible customers who can tune in to the frequencies themselves, just so they will feel at ease with him. Watanuki isn't sure anymore how to feel about this. On one hand, the boy he once was would be troubled and would find some way to self-harm and be consumed by his guilt; on the other hand, Watanuki is no longer a boy especially now that he feels his immense powers growing and expanding. The more imprisoned and enclosed he is and feels inside this shop, the more inclined he is to open himself to places unearthly, and the stronger his impulse to drink the seductive power the man in Yuuko's letters, her paramour penpal, often describes and offers frequently to her.

He should be scared himself but even his own fear would be appealing to him--so deliciously palpable. Even the Ame-Warashi's. He wishes he could make all their collective fears tangible enough to put in his pipe and smoke it. Watanuki smiles at the thought as he lowers his arm, releasing the Ame-Warashi from the trance. He could feel her trying to compose herself, to cover up her anxiety from earlier, to pretend that he is just a mortal child and he could not possibly endanger her. None of these petty reassurances work, he could tell. Maintaining his smile, Watanuki says, "I vow to treasure the hydrangeas and never let any harm come to them."

Ame-Warashi gives him another petulant look but nods anyway and begins to float upwards, her eyes never leaving Watanuki's. She couldn't wait to get away. After her disappearance, Watanuki returns inside the shop and goes straight to the kitchen. He finds the apples waiting, all unevenly yet beautifully chopped for him. He takes one slice and licks on it before he chews. The taste is ultimately unsatisfying, Watanuki thinks, all its succulence now helplessly ordinary and so transient for him, and he hungers for more than just a single bite on things that rot.

 

**xXx**

 

Watanuki dreams and wakes in intervals that night. He couldn't be sure and he couldn't bother himself to care. He lays there, splayed across the mat, his borrowed kimono which used to be hers now sticking to him, the crisp exoskeleton of a dead butterfly. He grimaces and then chuckles, dares himself to sob and call out her name but finds himself reaching for the pipe instead, eager and desperate to burn his throat and lungs with the numbness of opiates and the complacency of the empty dreams they bring. 

He wakes again and sees Doumeki beside him, sitting near the bed. The soft white silks hanging above the bed cascaded and moved like phantoms dancing over his features, hiding and revealing him all at once. He bolts up and grabs Doumeki's loosened neck tie and buries his mouth against the other man's. Doumeki slips his hands underneath his kimono and rips it open, pushing the seer back into the mattress with all of his weight pressing down on Watanuki. He fumbles for the button and zipper on Doumeki's trousers and frees him of them. Kicking the rest of his their clothes to the foot of the bed, they made love in a restless rhythm. Doumeki slips in and out of him in a punishingly and agonizingly slow and tender movement of hips and groin, and Watanuki is not having any of it.

He switches the positions and takes Doumeki with a little cruelty, unmindful of whatever pain he is causing to the other man's passage. Rough and fast and unapologetic, Watanuki makes love to him in a murderous pace. Doumeki's fingernails dug through the skin of his shoulders and then on his back as he in turn bleeds for Watanuki who didn't relent as he thrusts, fucks in and in and in until Doumeki was spent and panting, begging for Watanuki to come, and come hard for him--in him--and Watanuki sinks in further and releases. Doumeki lets out a primitive growl and follows him seconds later, spurting out his essence and painting their stomachs with it.

He wakes again and he is on her couch, alone in the room with his drugs running dry from his pipe, and a bowl of apples on the side. He sits up carefully, head heavy as lead, and curses the sudden wakefulness that snapped him back from the earthy plane. He pulls the kimono close to him because he feels cold, and realizes it was Doumeki's light blue shirt, and it smelled like love. Like death. The lucky bastard. If a scent can be a sound, this would be low in frequency, something only creatures from the deepest depths of sea can hear. It hurts his everything.

It makes him feel old and unending and he just wants to sleep away the exhaustion of forever.

Watanuki rests his bare feet on the floor and sharply pulls the shirt off his torso and tosses it away.

He collapses back into the couch and wakes again to the sound of wings flapping from a distance. He stirs and blinks away the dark spots in his vision and finds himself outside the shop, splayed across the garden bed, just underneath the hydrangeas. He dreams of rain bathing his skin, of clutching a strip of ribbon on his hand, of being awakened by Doumeki's insistent tugging of the thread, of being home again.

Watanuki smiles through the nothingness of it, the desired loss of all feeling.

He hears a girl call to him, "Kimihiro-kun?"

Watanuki wakes and finds Kohane by his side with Maro and Moro peering behind her, looking perturbed and about to cry.

"Are you here with us now?" Kohane whispers as she runs her fingers through the locks of his hair. She looks older than he remembers, face wider and eyes bigger; the shirt of her school uniform tight around her chest. She has breasts and curves and her hair is luxurious and she has lips that are made to be kissed. Watanuki smiles at her and props on one of his elbows as he leans to get his smoke-pipe. Without another word exchanged between them, Kohane reaches out and helps him light it.

The tip smolders and comes to life as he takes a puff, watching Kohane with half-lidded eyes.

"Are you okay?" Maro and Moro return to his side, stroking his limbs, smoothing down with their tiny, precocious hands whatever they thought was wrinkled in his slumber.

"Thank you," he tells them, still gazing at Kohane sitting before him, her eyes deep and knowing as always. He angles his body closer and whispers to her, "Thank you for coming..." and kisses her cheek.

"I'm making dinner for all of us tonight," Kohane lowers her eyes as she touches her cheek where his kiss left an indiscernible mark. "Shizuka-kun will be arriving later with some groceries I asked him to pick up."

"Lovely," Watanuki comments, blowing out smoke away from the girl's direction.

Kohane just nods, unsmiling but not unkind in countenance, as she pulls herself up from the floor. She takes his hand before she leaves and says, "Kimihiro-kun, please stay with us a little longer before you drift away to the dreamscapes again. I want to have some conversation with you. I hope that'd be okay."

Watanuki smiles again but it barely touches his eyes by now. "Yes, dear girl, yes. I'm here."

Kohane lets his hand fall to his lap as she begins to walk towards the sliding doors, the two other girls trailing behind.

"I'm always here," Watanuki calls out to her.

She didn't turn to acknowledge him but he focuses on her back and picks up a sliver of thought from her instead.

_You're here until you're not._

She shuts the doors behind her and Watanuki almost chokes on his laughter. 

"Foolish thing," he remarks, tapping his pipe on his knee as he fully sits up now, "Both of them, so foolish. Worrying about me wishing myself to disappear when they're the ones who could die when I no longer can't."

He laughs and pretends he doesn't want to start crying instead.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kohane stumbles upon Watanuki's greatest shame and is dearly accosted for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **TRIGGER WARNINGS** (I suppose): There are a few sentences about rape. And a more nuanced discussion about it later on with a twist. While writing this chapter I realized I definitely want to convey a dark!Watanuki and this chapter starts his evolution to that.  
>   
> 

 

 

 

**158: You Must Fear What You Cannot Know**

* * *

 

 

 

 

Now and then, there is a gap in the continuous flow of time inside the wish shop when Watanuki would notice that the silence his normal human hearing perceives is a lie. When it happens, he indulges in a little exercise. So he opens his eyes the entire time he listens in to the restless cacophony of barely discernible noises that surrounds him, patiently fine-tuning his senses to the ones that he could decipher. He doesn't lull himself with his opiates when he does this, ensuring he is as alert as he could be as he switches across the many frequencies that often prickle his skin. The sensation this exercise brings is visceral, raw as cauterizing fire on tissue, and so agonizingly intoxicating. Even the little pain that's occasionally there is something he wants sustained, something that's near to permanence that he could never have with other things.  
  
He stands here now in the kitchen's entrance, leaning by the doorway's frame, and the way his body stretches even against something solid makes it look like he was about to slip and fall into slumber again. Life in the wish shop has been one dream after the next after all. If he ever had nightmares, Watanuki knows they would be the waking hours in between which he begins to loathe. He only stays awake if he is summoned by a customer. If he isn't granting wishes, then he'd rather stay in a comatose; it's the only perfect excuse to disintegrate numbingly into his subconscious, and what it offers is always an interesting blend of sight and sound.  
  
Watanuki shakes his head, willling himself not to think about them for now. There is only a small window of opportunity to sort through the cacophony at this moment, and he has tracked down one particular voice that for a few days has drowned out the rest.  
  
Finely tuning his evolving telepathy is hard work; it's part concentration and part luck. He simply has to stay still for half an hour or so before he finds an access into the right channel, and then he has to travel his way from there. It takes him several minutes to make the connection and another hour to sustain it in the right frequency. If he isn't confined so strictly in one place with walls barricaded with spells and other excess energies, then he probably could sharpen his control and precision better.  
  
It doesn't matter thinking about that now because Watanuki just found her again. _Ah, yes. Hello, dear one. There you are._  
  
A woman. Possibly mid-thirties. Married. Childless. As he hovers above her sleeping figure, Watanuki could sense the deep gashes on her back, and he traces the bruises on her thighs with the faint touch of his mind, where her husband's brother had his fingers dig in when he took her without shame. For a few seconds or more, Watanuki is sorely tempted to find the man in question and drill holes into his skull using everything he has in his disposal. He immediately decided it was impractical and petty to feel such self-righteous indignation so he focuses instead on trying to reach her as she slept.  
  
_Come to me_ , he whispers into the folds of her dreamscape, making sure he was merely a thin needle gently probing. Back in the wish shop where his physical body resides, Watanuki breathes out through his nostrils and readies himself for the difficult part of this exercise. It's so simple to visit places in dreams. It's different and a lot more delicate to place himself right inside a person's subconscious and leaf through their memories, to expose them, especially when they're painful ones not worth remembering. He knows this would be torture for the both of them but he couldn't let her forget. How could she afford to when there are scars both visibly seen and not all that are violently etched into her?  
  
The reel of memories unravels before them in flickering motions, and Watanuki forces himself to look because it's the least he could do after he stole these from her and projected them on their shared screen. Watanuki heaves back in the wish shop, falling to his knees and almost crumbling completely on the floor as vivid, sequential images of her rape flashed in his open eyes. He stifles a whimper and covers his ears when he could sense her screams but the muted sounds were damningly resonant. Watanuki never thought sounds can sink into his pores until that moment. He fights back the bile at the back of his throat and continues to tremble even after the awful scene has diminished into debris between them.  
  
He fights the desire to apologize. It would be patronizing to do so anyway. He invades her sleep and trespasses into her dreams until they bled into nightmares, and then he says he's sorry? He damn well shouldn't. Instead, he makes her a promise.  
  
_Find me. Walk the path. Let your aching, ceaseless rage find me._  
  
He stays there for a whole minute in the astral plane because he wants to take her hand at least, hoping the touch could comfort her. There have been many times months ago when he'd climb through a particularly loud frequency like an ongoing rush of people on a busy street nearby the wish shop, and just try to tap as many shoulders using his mind. Only one or two people would notice that sudden feeling of being touched by a phantom presence but even then it was easily dismissed. Watanuki mused if that is all he could ever be to the physical world beyond the walls of his prison-abode; merely a gush of wind that brushes on everyone's skin but never as something to hold--as someone neither living nor dead.  
  
While still hovering inside the woman's mind, Watanuki places a projected hand, mentally interlocking his fingers with hers. He could feel her shudder in his unwelcome grasp as the connection starts to lose clarity and intensity until there was nothing else but just the aching sense of her touch never to be felt again. She cuts the line and the world they share instantly dissolves. Just like that. Watanuki closes his eyes now and pulls his knees to his chest. He has been in a fetal position on the kitchen floor all along, tears marring his cold cheeks with heat and wetness that make him feel more human than ghoul. He gives himself a few more minutes and then slowly rises up from the ground until he was on his feet again. He doesn't feel any less shattered, though.  
  
He looks around the kitchen and realizes this is still a dreamscape. Watanuki walks to a nearby window and peeks through the blinds. Outside the sky is orange and instead of streets there was an ocean in front of the wish shop, stretching for miles in both directions. The mighty roar of waves raking through the shoreline tempted Watanuki to stay in this place, but he remembers that Kohane is visiting, probably making something decent for them to eat, right there in the kitchen of the waking world where Watanuki should find a way back to now. He sighs and rubs his eyes which still sting, and then he closes them again as he slips one hand inside his yukata to pull out his smoke-pipe. He places its long, thin body between his fingers and then nibbles on the tip, tasting the remnants of his previous session. He puffs into it again and again until he discerns with half-open eyes the smoldering red glow on the other side.  
  
He pulls the pipe away and exhales. Thick smoke encloses around the rest of his body. It fills up his lungs. It caresses his exposed flesh. Watanuki smiles and imagines wings, and the vision of flight completes the rest of his descent back to wakefulness.

 

 

 

**xXx**

  
  
He doesn't recognize the young and beautiful girl staring at his face when he wakes up, already frowning at the drab sameness of the ordinary that greets him. Her pleasant face is an acceptable contrast to the enclosed room he calls his lounge which he is so tempted to vandalize by now, and perhaps he might one of these days. But there are still lifetimes ahead, and he plans to prolong the coming nights with dreamweavings and telepathic exploration, and delay anything that could speed up the thrilling intervals of his opiate consumption.  
  
Still unable to recognize the girl, he flips through a page of her open-booked mind and reads a passage. It has something to do about school and other girls who nervously avoid crossing paths in empty hallways with her. He peruses through the next one and sees Doumeki appearing, framed by strips of light that make his features come alive. Watanuki perks up at the image and sits up from his sofa. He smiles and runs two fingers across the girl's honey-colored hair then puts a loose strand behind her ear. He acknowledges her now.  
  
"Kohane-chan," he breathes out. "You look troubled."  
  
"You told me you were going to follow me to the kitchen an hour ago, and yet I find you here, having one of your naps."  
  
The sadness in her tone is rich and thick, the flavor sweet. Watanuki shakes his head and smiles just a little more. "I did go to the kitchen. I was just there."  
  
Kohane nods once. "In a dream?"  
  
"Something to that effect though not quite." Watanuki gazes at her chest secretly, and imagines her softness pressing against the weight of his own body, wondering if he would feel heat on his stomach in the same way he felt when Doumeki ravished him. He leans closer within her reach and wraps an arm behind her back, reeling her in. Both her palms rested on his back as she placed her chin at the crook of his shoulder. Holding her was familiar, a buried memory of a life he used to have, the kind where he actually found someone who understood firsthand how incompleteness cuts deep. Kohane doesn't fight his closeness. Something in her mind just lights up from the contact and warmth mingled with childhood innocence pours out of her. He loosens his embrace and pulls back then, peering at the face of a young woman who hasn't realized she has grown up and is no longer the frightened, maltreated child prodigy whom he saved.  
  
He couldn't bring himself to tell her that so instead he apologizes. "I'm sorry for falling asleep again. Please believe me when I say I don't do it because you're boring company." Watanuki retreats his arm back and gazes at her with a less relaxed stance. The stupor of the earlier dream has loosen its hold and Watanuki is experiencing the withdrawal and it was sharp and unkind, seizing him back into the tangible world of old tatami mats, unimpressive decor and actual human contact in a form of a sisterly companion he never asked for. His heightened sensitivity makes him more unaccustomed to this reality that defines the rest of the population. He briefly wonders if Yuuko felt the same way. Is that why she was drunk all the time? To cope from the disconnected nature of her person? To feign normalcy?  
  
Kohane watches him closely as she smiles back in her usual shy way, still emitting warmth, with her mind humming with ' _I care, I care, you matter to me, Kimihiro-kun_ , and Watanuki is hearing none of it anymore so he turns it off. She's speaking with her voice now as she replies, "I've been trying something new. I've been trying to practice Ethiopian cuisine, and I want you and Shizuka to try it."  
  
Watanuki widens his eyes at this. "That's a remarkable endeavor. And how is it coming along?" he stretches to reach for his smoke-pipe on the small table near Kohane and she in turn takes the box of matchsticks and waits for him to fill the pipe's mouth with crushed leaves and a drop of cinnamon oil. Watanuki moves closer to her as she places the fire of the matchstick to hover above the pipe's mouth, moving it back and forth a little bit. The opiates burn deliciously between them and its strong original scent in the air accompanied by the savory heat he could feel thrumming pleasantly in his lips makes Watanuki shudder in delight.  
  
He inhales and exhales, eyes closed. When he opens them again, he muses aloud. "It's just 'Shizuka' now, is it?"  
  
And the dear thing actually blushes. The pink tinge of her cheeks was lovely, urging him to continue teasing her. "Oh, my goodness," he adds, resting his palm on his chin as he smirked knowingly at her.  
  
Kohane said nothing in response for a while. And then, "He's been good to me. I'd like to think he's my best friend."  
  
Watanuki blinks once. Twice. And then he flutters his eyelashes almost in feigned flirtation and chuckles. "How sweet. But I'm afraid I'm a little jealous. I thought I was Kohane-chan's best friend."  
  
Kohane opens her mouth but immediately closes it. She looks down on her hands which were curling into fists on her lap. Watanuki looks at them too and his smile loses all its playfulness as he says, "That was an awful thing to say, I'm sorry. It's just…" he shakes his head, laughs again and says nothing anymore. He takes another puff from his pipe, prolonging it before exhaling, and decides he should be getting up. As he begins to do just that, Kohane follows his lead and rises alongside him. They walk to the kitchen together in silence. Kohane is ahead of him, hair flowing at her back in perfect ringlets. She turns to the corner of long corridor and enters the kitchen.  
  
The varied and unusual scents of unfamiliar food hit Watanuki and he steps back momentarily, standing there on the doorway so he can adjust his senses. The prominent smell of foreign spices is an assault to him at first but he takes a few steps forward and gradually begins to enjoy the newness of everything near him. As Kohane ties her apron around her waist, he examines the ingredients and names what he knows, "Lentils, string beans and carmelized onions. And this?" he comes close to the pot on the stove and inhales. He takes a utensil and stirs the contents with a ladle, and then he scoops a spoonful to taste it. The spice caught at the tip of his tongue is thick and it burns his mouth immediately. He almost coughs, but he likes it so he learns to manage the taste within a few seconds.  
  
He furrows his brows and remarks. "That's chickpea, isn't it? And the spice powder you used is? "  
  
"It's something called Berbere." Kohane astutely replies and offers him a glass of water. "I wanted to make my own blend but some of the ingredients are not native here. So I just looked for the imported powder mix bottle, which is only available in a grocery outlet that's almost close to the next city."  
  
"And they call this soup dish--?"  
  
"Shiro," she answered. "This one," she shows him a curious sort of thin pancake bread with tiny holes on its , "is their staple bread. It's called an injera. They usually eat this with everything." To demonstrate, she takes a lays the bread on a rectangular plate and places lentils and beet soaked in red sauce, carmelized onions and some sautéed carrots and potatoes in separate quantities and then spreads them across the injera. Watanuki sips the water as he nods his head appraisingly, all the while appreciating her meticulous and very confident manner of handling the dish in front of them.  
  
"We can eat with our hands," she adds.  
  
"I'm excited to eat what you have prepared, Kohane-chan," Watanuki beams at her, almost in pride. "Especially the Shiro," he leans back in the stove to get another whiff. "The spice is incredible. It really shocks you to pay attention to your food."  
  
"I'm pleased," she looks down and smiles sheepishly, brushing imaginary dust from her apron. Her blush is so beautiful, Watanuki thinks, sorely tempted to read the contents of her mind again but he resists. Instead, he leans by the door frame and watches her cook.  
  
Kohane engages him in small talk the entire time. She drones about school work but avoids mentioning the girls in class who stay out of her way as if she is a plague; she mentions that her favorite subject is Mathematics but fails to bring up the fact that she is a bit infatuated with the woman who teaches it. Watanuki tries to turn off his ability to listen to the real stories buried in the ones spoken aloud but is hearing them anyway. Kohane talks more than Doumeki ever has on one night and with the latter it's usually his silence that holds more stories than his actual words. It's such a contrast to Kohane now whose words are composed of half-truths and partial lies. Even though he's bemused, Watanuki shifts uncomfortably but keeps a smile playing on his lips every time she turns around to gauge a response from him. There is something unsettling about how much she is talking now (when has she ever been such a conversationalist?) so Watanuki digs in with the thinnest of needles as he could manage to project right into her mind and saw...  
  
"By the way, Kohane-chan," he interjects when she finally pauses for breath mid-sentence. "What do you reckon Doumeki could contribute to our little feast tonight?"  
  
Kohane is looking at him blankly. Watanuki inserts a needle into her head with a hardly discernible pressure. There it is again; the ridiculous strips of light surrounding Doumeki as she recalls him. In her mind's image, he stands so tall before her. He is holding her hand, giving it a squeeze.  
  
Back in the kitchen with the two of them now, Watanuki notices her gaze lowering to the ground again as if she is afraid he will read something in her expression to give herself away unless she conceals it. He almost snorts a derisive laugh at that.  
  
_You can't keep things from me, not with my power._  
  
"I told him to bring dessert," she replies hastily and turns away to stir the pot of shiro. "We found this pastry shop six months ago and we've talked about bringing you some for weeks now."  
  
"How delightful," Watanuki tries to sound warm when he says that.  
  
_I'd like to think he's my best friend_ , Watanuki hears her previous words echoing. He believes it but not he's not entirely convinced of her sentiment behind the claim. There is something else he is missing here. And, for some reason, he fears not knowing what it is.  
  
"I think you're going to like the assortment of those pastries, Kimihiro-kun," she says while her back is turned.  
  
_I want you to eat more._  
  
"By the way, I've been reading this book about birds."  
  
_I've been dreaming about you growing wings and flying away from this nest, never to return. I wonder if you would have been happier._  
  
"Shizuka...Shizuka-kun has just started with a new teaching job, did you know? I suppose you already do. I've been visiting him during our lunch breaks as much as I could."  
  
Silence.  
  
There are no underlying words in her statement. Instead there was that image of Doumeki again. Bright. Kind. Holding her hand.  
  
"I'll prepare the table," Watanuki remarks as he begins taking plates and a few utensils and places them in a tray. He didn't wait for her reply as he walks out of the kitchen, maintaining a slow gait the entire time even though there was a baffling part of him that wants to run.

 

 

 

**xXx**

  
  
Maro and Moro move restlessly around the table as they set down plates and mats, repeating their tasks to themsleves aloud in a sing-song way. At times like this, Watanuki is relieved to be surrounded by their empty shells for they possess no active private thoughts of their own. Even Mokona's exuberant hopping was a pleasant diversion. Watanuki sits there, fiddling with his pipe, as he observes the three of them, his lifelong companions; two soulless little girls and a creature that resembled a stuffed toy. He smiles at them, deciding they are far better company than Kohane who is acting in ways he isn't sure he approves of. Things would be so much more convenient for both of them (especially for him) if Kohane Tsuyuri stayed a child forever. A foolish request, one a wish granter of six years and counting should know better. Soon enough, Kohane will outgrow Watanuki. She will form bonds outside her comfort zone and Watanuki will be left behind. The thought is only upsetting if he thinks about the kind of people Kohane will eventually choose over him.  
  
They have to be a happier sort of folk who can take her into adventures and widen that small corner with him that she calls home into something less restrictive, more outdoorsy. Watanuki places his smoke-pipe on the small mantelpiece in front of him and leans back on the sofa, tugging at the sash of the kimono and exposing his chest. He looks up without seeing anything clear above and lets his mind drift…to search for an open channel somewhere in the streets, perhaps on one of the rooms of the apartment complex just next to the wish shop. He taps a careful knock on every door, and finds everyone occupied with their own chosen leisure. Some are working with numbers, computing finances, cursing the taxes. A few others are drinking. There are two couples in the middle of a heated argument right now while one lonely man on the highest floor jerks himself off while looking at his cousin's naked pictures on his phone.  
  
Watanuki pulls his head back down, his face hardening because of justified irritation and mild disgust. Why would anyone choose to be human, doing incomprehensible human things; to have your key turned by whatever force in the universe or god you subscribe to, and then dance like winded-up puppets who think the tune is all you are?  
  
He closes his eyes then chuckles low. He sits up and then watches as Maro and Moro take turns throwing Mokona at one another. They beam at him when they notice his watchful eyes. Watanuki collapses back to his sofa and tries again to make contact outside. Several people passed the wish shop, and none of them can see it. He imagines himself standing outside the entrance, counting the filaments of sparse thoughts passing through each one of these ignorant fools. Nothing stood out. Every single one of them is so painfully and plainly human.  
  
_Yuuko-san, you're wrong. People are not the most mysterious of them all. Or were you simply patronizing us?_  
  
_Because I'm human too,_ Watanuki corrects himself.  
  
_Am I not?_  
  
_Well, I still am_.  
  
But then he hears the Jorougumo clicking her tongue, disagreeing with that as the dark pools of her eyes glinted; he sees the Ame Warashi shrinking away from his touch without meaning to, and he feels the worship in Doumeki's caress as if he was paying respects to a sacred instrument and not a common man.  
  
_All I ever hoped to be is common,_ Watanuki muses, _no ghosts chasing at my heels, no magic spells or mistaken identities, no reckless barters and hefty prices. I want to be normal._  
  
_Except I don't._  
  
_Don't I?_  
  
_At least not anymore._  
  
"Kimihiro-kun?"  
  
Watanuki opens his eyes.  
  
Kohane is right in front of him again, a deep frown settling on those soft, pink lips. Her hands are on his shoulders and it looks as if she has just shaken him back from slumber. Watanuki isn't even aware that he is sleeping. He is sure he was awake when he came back to…what is he supposed to do again? He gazes behind Kohane but she is blocking his view. He tries to focus on something other than her closeness and the scent of her skin…scent…ah, he can detect the heat of something edible, perhaps soup. He sits up slowly, allowing Kohane to guide him as he does. She is kneeling by his side now and when she lifts him up, he catches a glimpse of a full table laid before them.  
  
Watanuki remarks, "Well done, everybody."  
  
He squints his eyes as he counts the plates. Only four. He knows that Mokona and the girls will have their share of dinner. But aren't they supposed to have another guest? He strains to shake the stupor away as he asks, "Where is he?"  
  
_Doumeki. He's supposed to be here._  
  
"He came by hours ago with the groceries like I told you he would. We talked earlier this morning about it, don't you remember? About cooking you dinner? When I came back here, Shizuka-kun was with me but you were asleep again. We didn't bother waking you up the second time because you gave strict instructions to Maro and Moro not to do that. So we just let you sleep for a bit again."  
  
Watanuki turns his head toward her. "Yes, I remember that." He gazes back at the food on the table. "Thanks again for this. I haven't had Ethiopian cuisine yet and the shiro smells good from here. Too spicy for my liking, of course. But I can handle it."  
  
He stands up carefully and walks a few steps to reach the table. He sat down. Maro and Moro followed suit as they raced Mokona to the table. When Kohane stayed where she is, he inquires without looking at her, "So, what time is he coming back?"  
  
No answer.  
  
Watanuki looks at her and the expression in her face has made him pause midway getting the serving spoon. She looks absolutely baffled about something.  
  
"What is it, Kohane-chan?"  
  
"How did you know?"  
  
Watanuki resumes picking up the serving spoon and giving the first scoop to the girls who held up their bowls excitedly. "Know what?"  
  
"About the cuisine. You said you never had it. And yet you knew that soup is called shiro, and that it's spicy."  
  
Watanuki doesn't look at her again as he pours a generous amount of sake for Mokona. "Hmmm? I guess I was mistaken then?"  
  
Kohane is walking to the table now. She places a hand on his, forcing him to look at her. Watanuki just blinks up at her.  
  
"Something is wrong with you." Kohane simply says, her voice devoid of feeling but her eyes say other otherwise.  
  
"Don't fret," he reassures her. "I think it's just another lapse."  
  
"What lapse?"  
  
"A dream interaction." Watanuki explains, withdrawing his hand from underneath hers as gently as he could. "You said I slept the entire day and only woke up again after you finished cooking dinner. And yet, the entire time, in the dreaming, I was communicating with you the in the kitchen as you cooked," he takes the injera bread and filled it with lentils and potatoes, "of course, I'm the only one who remembers that conversation because in this world, it never happened. In the dreaming, it did. A version of you explained about the Ethiopian cuisine. You told me about the shiro. I even tasted it. That's how I knew it was spicy. And then," he takes a bite of the injera and chews for a while. As soon as he swallows, he adds, "we talked about other things."  
  
Kohane is sitting down now, processing everything she just heard in the best way she could. After a a while, she answered. "What else did we talk about in the dream?"  
  
"School. You have girls who seem to be afraid of you in class. There's your math teacher who you're clearly crushing on," Watanuki takes a sip of the shiro and makes a slight noise of approval. And then he goes on, "something about you and Doumeki having a favorite pastry shop. You've also been reading a book about birds."  
  
"Stop," Kohane's voice is small when she said that but it is enough to make Watanuki glance at her. He smiles.  
  
"I never told you any of those things."  
  
"But you did, at least you want to. And then that manifested in the dreaming," Watanuki is very patient throughout this conversation. He adds again, "It happens to me often. With Doumeki a few times too. Did you know that we had a rather awkward talk a night before regarding the nature of our feelings for each other? It could have been a lapse too," he gives her a little chuckle but she didn't respond.  
  
"When were you ever going to tell us?" Now she sounds a little angry.  
  
Watanuki frowns at her. "It's not like I was purposefully keeping secrets. I just learned to deal with the lapses on my own. It's been a normal thing for me now. I didn't want to burden you with a supernatural phenomenon that neither you nor Doumeki can possibly comprehend anyway."  
  
Kohane is just glaring at him. He has never seen that expression in her face before, and it's adorable.  
  
She leans in, resting both elbows on the table. Her eyes are sharp as she asked, "How can you be sure you're not dreaming right now?"  
  
He looks away from her for a while to sip the shiro and then he pours a quantity of it in the injera bread. He takes a bite, chews, swallows and then leans back in, watching her with some interest.  
  
"The truth is," he replies softly, "I never am."  
  
It seems as if Kohane wants to say something about that but Watanuki raises a finger to interrupt her as he cocks his head to the side. On his left, Maro and Moro stop eating. They pull themselves out of their chairs and slide the door open so they can leave.  
  
Watanuki pulls out his smoke-pipe from thin air. Kohane blinks at him in shock. He realizes that she has never seen him summon objects using a simple spell before. He just shakes his head, chuckling once as he lights the pipe. After taking a hit, he blows the smoke politely away from her face and tells her, "I think we're going to have to cut the dinner short. We wouldn't want to keep a customer waiting now, would we?"  
  
He gives her a wink and rises from his chair.

 

 

 

**xXx**

  
  
The two soulless girls are not singing or pulling playfully at the customer at all. They stand on either side of the woman and neither of them are touching her. Their eyes are vacant, looking straight ahead. They speak in unison only to tell Watanuki that this is the customer and that she is very, very welcome. Afterwards they walk towards him to stand by his side as he greets the woman he is almost sure he has been acquainted been before. There is a brief recognition in her eyes as if she is thinking the same thing but it lasts only for a few seconds and she quickly apologizes for the intrusion.  
  
Before she could recite the same litany all of his customers say, Watanuki interjects and calmly says, "You know you are meant to be here." He puffs his pipe and exhales. "You are looking for me."  
  
"I," the woman's breathing is becoming irregular. Watanuki watches with dispassion as she tries to collect herself. As soon as she does, she answers him, "I don't even know you or where I am."  
  
"You're where you need to be," Watanuki turns to his side. "Come."  
  
He walks back to the lounge with Maro and Moro still trailing behind him. The woman's footsteps behind him are quiet but every step is heavy with both doubt and intent. Watanuki opens up the channel of his mind to get a better sense of her, and he realizes she is carrying something with her, an energy, and he isn't sure exactly where it's coming from, at least not yet.  
  
"Please take a seat." Watanuki gestures at the table which Kohane is busy cleaning up. Maro and Moro are helping her to speed up the process and the woman stands there for a little longer out of courtesy. As soon as they clear everything up, the woman mutters gratitude and sits in one of the chairs. Watanuki takes a seat himself, facing her. He fiddles the pipe with his fingers, waiting for her to speak.  
  
The first words out of her mouth are, "You are right."  
  
He just stares.  
  
"I was looking for a place. Someone. And if this is it and you are what I need then I guess I should just come out and say it then."  
  
"No need to rush," he remarks, "Spin me your tale, dear one."  
  
The woman blinks in surprise. She visibly shivers. "Funny," she says, "I'm almost sure I know you."  
  
"Maybe in another life?" he offers.  
  
She smiles at that but her hands are shaking. She lowers her gaze on them and curls her hands into fists. "My name is…"  
  
When she trails off, Watanuki holds up a free hand, "You don't have to tell me, miss."  
  
She nods stiffly and while still looking at her fists, she goes on, "I don't know what to do. I could never tell anyone. I guess it's mostly because of denial…some secret shame, even though…even though I know.." she was beginning to tear up. She pauses to cry, using only her hand to wipe her tears, and Watanuki doesn't interrupt. When she finishes, she takes a deep breath and continues, "even though I know it's not my fault, I feel like I should be blamed for it too."  
  
Watanuki leans an inch closer to the table and asks, "Blamed for what?"  
  
"My compliance." She shrugs her shoulders. "The fear. My blind belief that…" she closes her eyes.  
  
Watanuki takes another hit of the opiates and releases the smoke, watching the trail float up the ceiling. He looks back at the woman across him and inquires, "And you believed what exactly?"  
  
The woman glares, probably offended by his lackadaisical behavior. "I was being stupid. Maybe I never should have come here," she makes an effort to stand but Watanuki speaks.  
  
"It will happen again," he blows out another smoke but surprises himself with his own response. It was sudden and spoken out so certainly. Watanuki narrows his eyes at her and wonders if he really met her before.  
  
"What would a kid like you know about it!?" she shouts at him, and the table shakes a little from the corner she was gripping with both hands. "Who the hell do you think you are?!"  
  
Watanuki's right eye is twitching. He closes his eyes and lets his mind reach out towards hers, sifting through the distortion of her thoughts until he finds exactly what he knows all along. The confirmation would have knocked him on his feet if he isn't already sitting.  
  
"I'm the only one who can grant your wish," Watanuki replies.  
  
That settles her a little bit. She chokes out with a small, disbelieving laugh, "My wish? What does that mean?"  
  
"That's what you came for, isn't it, Hisako-san?" he leans back to inspect the rest of her. He didn't give her a chance to speak again, to ask how he knows her and her innermost thoughts, as he adds, "You desire it so badly I can even smell it from here and it's foul. It's stinking up my breathing space and makes it impossible not to heave a little. You reek of such a dangerous desire that I must caution you, dear one, of the price that specific wish entails. And the price will ruin you." He allows the words to sink in for a a few seconds before he asks, "Are you ready to pay that price?"  
  
The woman called Hisako just stares with wide eyes and parted lips. Her hands have opened and they rest on the flat surface of the table, unmoving. A whole minute passed and she still could not speak.  
  
Finally, after another silent minute, she stands up. She leaves the room without saying another word. With her out of sight, Kohane comes up behind Watanuki, imploring, "Aren't you going to stop her?"  
  
But Watanuki merely smokes his pipe, his eyes shut tightly. A prickling sensation drills at the back of his skull and his ears are hurting. He doesn't answer Kohane and instead focuses on turning off the channel in his head but the frequency is forceful and it's close. Closer. Closer. And the door slides open again with the woman Hisako is marching her way back in. She is near hysterical, babbling and crying.  
  
"He promised he didn't mean to hurt me!" she chokes out. "He was drunk and sad and I was always so good to him. So I forgave him! And I was a fool to think he was being sincere."  
  
She brings her hands up and covers her face. "The second time it--well, he wasn't even bothering with the niceties afterwards. He threatened my life. My husband's! He said no one will ever believe me. He said I am tainted. And that my husband won't want me if he knew. He said he will never forgive me. Because I was a cheating whore!"  
  
She collapses on the floor, sobbing. Kohane is going to comfort her but then Watanuki rises from his chair and glides to where the woman is weeping her bitter tears. He sinks down to his haunches and places his hands on either side of her face so she can look at him.  
  
"Shhh," he murmurs. He rubs circles on those cheeks and listens to the gradual silencing of her persistent sobbing. He waits her to calm down and when she finally has, he tells her, "I know your wish and I'm telling you now that I don't think you can pay the price."  
  
She blinks at him and begs, "I'll give anything to you. Just take him away."  
  
Watanuki shushes her again as he lets his hands fall from her face. He stares at her for a few more seconds before he stands again. She remains on the floor, gazing at him with a mixture of awe and dread.  
  
"The price for taking away someone's life is to pay it with another's." He simply says, looking across the room which seems to narrow down, shrinking before his very eyes. He takes a few deep breaths and walks back to his chair where Kohane is looking at him as if he is a mirage, not completely existing. That look freezes his blood cold.  
  
"And no, your own life doesn't count," Watanuki responds before she could ask. "It's not enough. Nor is your husband's. To grant death upon someone, the price needed in exchange would be a soul that's pure, whose life hasn't been lived yet…" as he speaks, his gaze involuntarily travels across the woman's body. She notices this and quickly picks herself up, clutching at her stomach in manner that unsettles him.  
  
Watanuki opens his mouth again but words failed him the moment he begins to feel that unknown energy in the room again. It's near the woman. Maybe even inside her. She's been carrying it since the moment she stepped into the shop--  
  
_Oh._  
  
He takes a step back and almost bumps into Kohane.  
  
_Oh._  
  
_Oh, dear gods and all holy hosts_.  
  
When the woman Hisako notices how taken aback he is, looking at her for the first time with real fear, he can feel her growing confident and bold. She straightens up before him and there is a cruel curl in those lips that resembles a smile but is anything but. A smile is not supposed to look like that. Instinctively, Watanuki reaches for Kohane's hand and she squeezes back.  
  
The warm thrumming in the woman's mind is pouring into his open channel and it's making him sick.  
  
"I understand what I must pay," her voice is deceptively soft. She widens that terrifying smile. "Will you take it now?" she opens her palms up and steps forward.  
  
Kohane meets her halfway. "No. He won't."  
  
The woman almost hisses at her as she says, "What are you? His damn secretary? I don't think you speak for him." She roughly pushes Kohane out of her way as she rushes to get to Watanuki, falling into her knees as soon as she reaches him. With trembling fingers, she grips into the hem of his kimono and pleas.  
  
"It's only been three months," she whispers and every word is drenched in manic desperation, making Watanuki's skin crawl. "I haven't told either my husband or my disgusting brother-in-law about it, but trust me, it's his damn spawn, all right."  
  
"Please stop," Kohane is pulling her away from Watanuki but she elbows her and keeps holding onto his kimono, almost tearing at it.  
  
"I was meant to be here!" she screeches, "you said so yourself! You're the only one who can grant my wish. So please…god, please, help me and kill him!" she sinks lower to ground and her next words are inaudible but Watanuki is still connected to her mind, and he could understand her loud and clear against the colossal dark.  
  
_Kill him and his goddamn spawn growing inside me, please_.  
  
Gritting his teeth, Watanuki takes her by the wrists to pull her up and meet his eyes. He looks deeply into hers and tries not to project his own thoughts in their shared minds. Still, he couldn't help but listen to the pleas and other scattered things proliferating inside that confused head of hers, and a fresh surge of guilt hits him from where he is standing.  
  
_I asked her to find me, to let her ceaseless rage guide her._  
  
"Hisako-san," he loosened his grasp on her wrists. "I need you to go home. Weigh your options. Just…think about this some more. Please. It's been a tiresome night, wouldn't you agree?"  
  
The woman just stares. Her breath hitches. But then she nods her head.  
  
"Go home," he repeats, letting her go.  
  
"But how will I--?"  
  
He brushes his hand on the side of her face. "Our meeting is meant to take place. When you're ready, when you're absolutely sure--"  
  
"I am," she rests her warm hand on top of his where it's still caught in her face. Suddenly she isn't just a stranger to him anymore. "Please. It hurts to live with this kind of lie."  
  
Watanuki tries to say something but the woman continues with a resoluteness that cuts through the haze of his own thoughts, "I would rather take my own life than live with the shame. I would not raise the child inside me when I know it doesn't even belong to my husband."  
  
All he could manage to do at this point is to look below, to search that energy flowing from her, and touch its faint consciousness with his mind. He breathes out and says, "She."  
  
He glances up at the woman then at Kohane who is standing behind, her eyes watering with the impact of the situation.  
  
Watanuki meets the woman's gaze again. "The child is a girl."

 

**xXx**

 

When the woman Hisako leaves, Kohane walks to him and wraps her arms around his torso, squeezing tightly as if she is trying to make sure he is still here, that he's real.

"What were you thinking?" Kohane murmurs into the crook of his shoulder as she digs her nails at the back of his head. The pressure isn't painful but it is there nevertheless. "You should have refused and not ask her to come back."

"She has a will of her own.." Watanuki pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand as he wraps his free arm around her waist.

Kohane pulls slightly away to meet his eyes. "Yuuko-san would have said 'no' from the beginning."

"You sound so sure," Watanuki bears his gaze deeply into hers, growing very annoyed.

_You don't know anything. You don't know what it's like to be in their minds and hold their hearts in my hands and see the darkness seep in and all that pain and suffering and grief are consuming them--_

"I am," Kohane persists. "Yuuko-san would not grant a wish if the price that requires its fulfillment is too steep. She would have advised that poor woman with something else."

Watanuki frowns. 

\-- _and then they find their way to me. With just one wish, they can change the course of their lives. With a price, sure, but if they're willing to pay it, then there's at least peace to that._

"You're not yourself," she goes on, touching his face with her hands. "You haven't been yourself since the day began. And if Yuuko-san was here, she would say the same thing."

Watanuki smiles.

And then it became so easy to break her just a little bit.

With a quick response, he takes hold of her mind as if it is merely a small thing he can place in his own palm. With an expertise he hasn't realized he had, he starts to slide a thicker needle into that pretty, clueless head of hers. He notices her flinch from the sensation. Once. Twice. And then she goes absolutely still. As soon as she did, he takes her hands away from his face and pushes her roughly aside. She stays still the entire time.

"You don't know her like I did," he warns her.

_You never really knew me._

"Kimihiro-kun…" her eyes are wide and unseeing. She is afraid. The needle in her head is burrowing much deeper now. She can't speak. Her breathing slows down. If he wills it, he can slice her wide open and watch the contents spill. The idea is tempting but Watanuki resists, telling himself that he loves her and she loves him and yet that very knowledge is only making him more furious than before.

"And even if I didn't know her as well as I thought," he takes a step backward and hardens his expression as he watches her deathly still body just standing there. "I am not Yuuko. Do your best to remember that, little girl."

He doesn't remove the needle just yet, pushing in just a bit more to get through that singular annoying thread about Doumeki.

_He's your best friend, eh? Your hero._

When he finds it, he tugs at the seam, darkening the image of him in her mind's eye, and the strips of light that she framed him foolishly with fall away. Satisfied by the change, he releases her. His abrupt exit from her consciousness is so strong that she loses her balance and falls to the floor, clutching at her throat as if she had just been asphyxiated. Watanuki didn't see it because he has already walked away. He reaches his bedroom and shuts the door with an audible thud.

_So, tell me, my little sister._

_What does that make me now?_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The primary catalysts to Watanuki's descent to darker inclinations are his growing indulgence/dependence for both his developing telepathic abilities and opiates addiction. Of course, I want to tackle further the underlying issues concerning his fixation and latent negative feelings towards Doumeki and Kohane's friendship with each other; and his gradual attraction towards power in general (and that extends to him being a wish granter; and his fascination for Clow Reed in Yuuko's letters). 
> 
> If he becomes unrecognizable at some point, that was my intention. It's...not gonna be pretty.
> 
> Also, Watanuki is clearly becoming an UNRELIABLE NARRATOR too. He has "lapses" and can't really figure out which one is happening in the waking world and in dreams. So, by the next chapter, I'm switching to Doumeki's POV to clear things up, considering the guy has been missing for a whole two chapters already! 
> 
> So, there we have it. My Watanuki will get worse before he gets better. That is if he eventually learns from his bad habits which hopefully won't be too late or damaging for him to break. I'm both excited and dreadful to continue writing this.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watanuki finally admits that he had wished for something he wasn't ready to live with, while Doumeki realizes that there is someone else he cared about other than Watanuki.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest chapter I have ever written. I enjoyed it despite of the difficulties in the content. I remain very committed to the concept of this story. It might be a little disheartening to portray characters I love in this manner, but I have no regrets for writing a story like this one. It's been very rewarding. All of this hard work must be dedicated to the lovely [**Lacerate**](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacertae/pseuds/Lacertae), who is totes a cutie patooey friend. Her insights on the DouWata relationship have been invigorating and helpful in my brainstorming process for my Snapshots series, especially for the writing of this chapter. I appreciate her sweet nature and all the stuff we got to talk about, both fandom-related and personal. Thank you for the friendship, Soy!~

 

 

 

 

 

**152: To Love a Storm**

* * *

 

 

 

 

_Her eyes had always been sharp and penetrative, especially now, measuring him as they stood there across each other. Ame Warashi had one hand gripping the umbrella with purpose while her other hand extended, reaching towards him to give him the seeds he requested days ago. Doumeki walked closer to her. With his palm exposed above her hovering fist which clutched the seeds, he waited for her to say something else but she didn’t. Nevertheless, she never stopped glaring at him, even as she unclenched her fist and watched the seeds fall for him to catch. He withdrew and thanked her with a more notable courtesy than was usual. She acknowledged it by bowing her head for about three seconds. In doing so, her expression at least softened a bit but Doumeki was still uncomfortable._

_But now he had what he needed, so he immediately went down to his knees and began digging, using a small shovel. He buried each seed evenly across the warm patch of earth which was slightly drenched. Ame Warashi just stood perfectly still, and the only movement she allowed herself to make was by tapping one slender finger on the handle of her umbrella. Once Doumeki finished his task, he stood up again and thanked her for the second time. She dismissed him with a wave of hand; an obvious note of of impatience. Ame Warashi paused again to give him one last look, and then with a graceful motion she raised her umbrella way above her head. The entire thing slowly opened like petals as a drizzle of enchanted water flowed from the sky in small and leisurely drops which kissed nothing else but only the place where the seeds lay. A whole minute only had to pass before green stems burst forth, winding and entangling on and against each other as they pulled their way together out of the abyss below ground and into birth._

_The hydrangeas awakened fully, magnificent in their purple and blue colors, as tiny sparks of light surrounded each of their petals, making them glow. The flowers were about waist-high and crowded together in that space in a very inseparable manner that seemed almost unnatural. Ame Warashi stepped closer and ran her hand across the flowers like a doting mother checking for anything wrong with her child's appearance. When she was sure everything was in place, she looked at Doumeki again and spoke up._

_"I will require something of you in the future and you better be available," she said, "No excuses or delays. When I tell you I need you, you come. Are we clear, Shizuka Doumeki?"_

_"Yes," was his curt response._

_"Please be careful," she sounded genuinely worried even if it was mixed with general annoyance. Her feet left the ground now but she continued to gaze at him as she went on, "there are some things mortals like you are never meant to have. Trying to seize them will only bring you ill fortune, and it'd be a shame for a Doumeki to taint the legacy of the lineage just because he feels entitled to be selfish."_

_He did not know how to respond to that at all so he merely watched her go. Doumeki glanced at the hydrangeas across him and instead of feeling pleased, Ame Warashi's words haunted him and left him hollow, and a tiny bit scared that she may be right._

 

  
**xXx**

 

  
The unending dark subsided and the sheer brightness of a new day illuminated the room where Doumeki had slept, his rest uninterrupted by dreams. He woke up just around nine in the morning, blinking away the weariness with an unhurried ease as he began to focus on his very first coherent thought.

_Last night. It happened._

Watanuki had initiated closeness for the first time in six years--and kissed him. He also proposed that they should become lovers; not merely out of convenience but also because he desired Doumeki back. Watanuki wanted him, and he had feelings for Doumeki.

He could love Doumeki or probably already does after all.

Leaning on his elbows, Doumeki pulled himself from under the covers, wide awake now, and yet the incredible weight of this newfound knowledge from last night still threatened to bury and suffocate him from where he lay, but then Doumeki wouldn't give a damn because if this is what it feels like to have love reciprocated then he wished he could be crushed under its immense mass forever.

There may have been several instances in the past that it became possible for Doumeki to realize that he was slowly, but surely, learning to care about Watanuki in a way that went beyond following through self-imposed obligation, or being inspired by basic compassion or pity. But he had been so young and inattentive to his own feelings back then. He thought his continued willingness to sacrifice things (even componets of his body) for Watanuki was nothing unusual. It certainly felt natural. The other boy was skilled in cooking and fairly amusing to interact with. Doumeki liked having such a person around in his life. Those reasons should have been all there was to the whole thing. But later on he was able to admit to himself that these were excuses that hid the true nature of how he truly felt.

To this day, six years and eight months later, Doumeki still wasn't sure when it was exactly that he started falling in love with Watanuki.

What mattered is that it happened. There was no doubt in his mind that he is in love with Kimihiro Watanuki, and he wants to be with him forever. And Watanuki is certainly going to last that long, all because of an impulsive wish and a stubborn disregard for personal worth.

 _But that's okay because Watanuki finally loves me,_ Doumeki thought in silent awe and reverence, _and he wants us to be together. I have to find a way for us. Whatever the cost, I will be with him always._

 

  
**xXx**

 

  
He barely remembered what the rest of that day was like after that. He went to the university, spoke in front of people, stayed on his desk--but his mind was somewhere else, filled with thoughts and expectations of seeing Watanuki again at the shop. He did recall Tsuyuri mentioning something about making dinner for the three of them later tonight. She talked about this as they walked together to the university. Almost everything that day blurred later on for him while he is at work, but Tsuyuri always remained a vivid and permanent mark in his daily routine. He had been a part of her life growing up and whenever he took the time to dwell on it, it did surprise him to see that she had gotten taller and more confident, often speaking her mind immediately in his presence when something bothered her, or every time she thought a piece of information was worth sharing with him. She seemed happier and has become less of the maltreated child that she once was. This was comforting to Doumeki. Tsuyuri's welfare has become very important to him.

He found himself at safe ease around her company, knowing that she cared about the same things he did pertaining to the supernatural, and when it came to studying the history of certain folklores with as much patience and devotion. He traded notes with her on these subjects openly and she made him bentos in exchange which he welcomed since she was a fairly competent cook herself. Not especially skilled and talented like Watanuki, surely, but the meals she prepared for him were thoughtful and laborious enough that he could never turn them down. Eventually they ate together during lunch breaks and even though Doumeki wasn't oblivious to some people speculating the nature of their relationship, he decided to ignore the petty rumors, opting to maximize the time alloted in these lunch breaks by having scholastic discussions with her. More than anything else, despite their age difference, he saw the young girl as an equal.

But most of all, she loves Watanuki almost as deeply and as steadfast as Doumeki does. Their conversation about the paranormal would halt to make way for those often melancholic chats concerning Watanuki's predicament, and the tolls that must be weighing on him. It was during one of these chats that Tsuyuri volunteered to visit Watanuki at the shop and discern for herself if something was amiss. Doumeki was grateful he not only has someone to talk to about Watanuki, but also because she was someone who understood the helplessness of it all. He sometimes would feel terrible for leaning on her every now and then for support, but Tsuyuri would always take notice of this. Every time she did, she would reach for his hand and interlace their fingers together, her face the portrait of compassion as she looked at him.

And Doumeki would squeeze her hand back, as a sign of appreciation and reassurance that she can count on him as much as he could count on her. It could be enough, and during bad days when it becomes particularly hard to accept that Watanuki might already be lost to them, it is all the more essential for them to hold onto each other.

Tsuyuri was already waiting for him in the shop as soon as he finished work. Maro and Moro welcomed him home, taking his briefcase and offering to take off his shoes for him.

But Tsuyuri stopped them when she said, "There is something I want Shizuka-kun to do first," and then she handed him a piece of paper.

Doumeki looked at it. His task for today was to shop for groceries with specified ingredients that Tsuyuri made a list of.

"And Watanuki?"

"Sleeping. I will wake him up in a few minutes."

He knew it would sound ridiculous but he replied, "I want to see him now."

He paused, letting the words hang, waiting for her to comment on his obvious insistence to see the man he is in love with even when said man is currently resting, and wouldn't know or care whether he was there or not. But Tsuyuri said nothing. Her hand reached for his in that familiar manner he should have been accustomed to by now. He wasn't entirely appeased about it, though. Sometimes, if he allowed himself to dwell on it, there were moments Tsuyuri made him nervous. She is a beautiful girl and of course he had noticed. But it was also more than that. It was that she was a lot like Watanuki in ways he never expected. Sometimes he would envy that. He envied the way they talked to each other as if there will never be secrets between them. One fleeting glance shared between them means multitudes already. When he and Watanuki would sit side by side together during some of their late-night drinking sessions, there would be silent gaps that hovered between them that slowly began to feel like nothingness. Back when they were younger, he minded Watanuki shouting insults at him and wished he would just shut up. But six years later, he missed that dynamic, because it was his silence now that made Doumeki feel a little insignificant. He would feel very paranoid about even the smallest lack of communication.

It was only after they kissed that Doumeki realized that the reason he dreaded the silence was because it made him want to speak up, to blurt out feelings and vent out frustrations he wasn't ready to deal with yet. Before that kiss, Doumeki would look at Watanuki every now and then when he was absolutely sure the other man wasn't paying attention--and it would physically hurt him, because it was awful. It was precisely like staring at the one and only thing one has ever wanted and could have had, but never will.

Doumeki and Tsuyuri walked together in the hallway now, their hands still clasped. With both their other free hands, they pushed the sliding door open. There at the farthest corner of the room was Watanuki and he was on his stomach, arms folded with his knuckles resting under his chin. His round glasses had already fallen from the bridge of his nose. He was draped in a plain orange kimono and he had thin strips of red ribbons tied around each ankle. Once they were standing closer, Watanuki rolled to his back but stayed asleep. The rise and fall of his chest made him look so utterly content, but Doumeki knew better, and so did Tsuyuri. Their hands slipped away from each other.

Doumeki kneeled to brush his fingers through Watanuki's bangs. He took off his glasses and set them aside.

Abruptly, he turned his head towards Tsuyuri. "Were you saying something?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered him earnestly. "I said 'I wish he wouldn't be alone.'"

Doumeki sighed and pulled himseld up. Gazing down at her, he said, "He's not alone now. That's what matters."

They closed the sliding door behind them and headed back to the shop's entrance where Tsuyuri would see him off.

"I," she began, pausing to look down at her feet before looking back at him again. Doumeki stood there with his hands on his side, getting anxious about her reluctance to say the next words.

"I wish Shizuka wouldn't have to be alone either," she finally confessed.

He shook his head. "But I'm not."

She knitted her eyebrows in contrition. Tsuyuri always seemed older whenever she frowns as if she is bravely carrying the world on her shoulders. He never liked that.

Doumeki meant to place a warm hand on her head like he used to do when she was only a child. But instead, almost out of instinct, he cupped her cheek with his hand. She could only stare at him, unblinkingly. She went absolutely still with the contact.

Surprising himself even more, he assured her by adding, "I have you."

 

  
**xXx**

 

  
It was around four in the afternoon when he finished with the groceries.

"It's so nice, isn't it?" Kunogi beamed openly at him as they stood there in the counters together, "to run into each other on a fine night like this?"

"Well," Doumeki responded as he watched the clerk take the next item from his shopping cart, "I've been told there are no coincidences." He then stared at her, lending it with some weight. Kunogi only smiled but pulled her shawl more securely around her arms. The motion made him look at her shoulders. She wore a sleeveless blouse. Noticing his attention, she chuckled.

"I was thinking of having my hair cut," she remarked, measuring the length in which she wanted it shortened.

"But…" Doumeki was careful with his next words. "Won't you get cold? It's the winter season."

Kunogi laughed louder. He knew that she knew he was concerned about something else which has less to do with the drop in the temperature and her sensitivity to it, but more with what she was supposed to cover up.

"My husband doesn't mind," was her quiet response.

Doumeki watched the sudden softness of her features as she gazed down the ground. He knew that she knew they were talking in a crypic language. He decided to add. "It's great to have a spouse who is supportive."

Kunogi looked back at him, blinking in surprise.

"I think he would like you with short hair," Doumeki finished.

"Really?" Kunogi smiled. "Won't you think it'd be embarrassing though, or a waste to have my hair trimmed so short?"

"No, I don’t," he moved to the end of the counter to pick up the groceries. He took pause before he remarked as kindly as he could, "There is nothing to hide. You don’t have to do that anymore."

Kunogi said nothing but he noticed that she did slow down her steps as they walked together towards the exit doors, as if in contemplation. After a few minutes, she asked him to hold her brown bags for her. Once he did, they stopped near a street sign as Kunogi tied her hair up in a bun using rubber bands. She finished the daunting task with another smile and took back her items from his grasp.

They walked crossed the street together. Kunogi glanced at him a bit and asked, "do you think it suits me?" indicating her hair.

Doumeki looked right at her nape where he glimpsed some of the scarred lacerations that climbed like unruly vines sprouting from her back. They revealed themselves to him, even from this angle.

"Yes, it does," he answered truthfully. "You carry that well."

She gave him a knowing smile and said no more.

 

  
**xXx**

 

  
Doumeki only stopped by the shop to hand the groceries to Tsuyuri.

"I'm sorry," he told her gently, "there's an emergency faculty meeting I was summoned to. It's unprecedented, I know, but I can make it back here in two hours, I guess."

Tsuyuri replied, "Kimihiro-kun is still asleep. We will wait for you. Besides, the food preparation will take a while anyway."

She added. "But wait here for a moment, please."

When she came back about three minutes later, she had wrapped some homemade sandwiches for him and placed them inside a plastic container. Bashfully, she remarked, "This is the best I could do. I just didn't want Shizuka to get hungry."

Doumeki allowed himself a small smile. "Thank you. You're always one to look after my comfort, aren't you, Tsuyuri?"

She blinked at him, her cheeks now more flushed than ever. And then she broke into a smile. The sight of it in her face made Doumeki's chest tighten just a little bit. He reached out to take the container from her and as he did, his fingers brushed against her on the sides. He noticed her slightly shrink away from the contact, but he said nothing to address it.

"Take care," she said as she watched him go on his way.

About an hour and a half later, he was walking in the bright clearing of the streets and back to the shop, hoping he was just in time for dinner. He was expectant of the kind of dish Tsuyuri prepared this time. Some of the ingredients she listed earlier were foreign, and he knew she had been keen to try and expand with other recipes. Last time it was something Mediterranean. Doumeki once watched her toil for hours inside the kitchen during a weekend, preoccupied with her culinary experiments. She always looked so happy and relieved whenever she gets them right, most especially when he would show enthusiasm over what she just made. Tsuyuri always valued his opinion regarding the taste even though Doumeki hardly knew about foreign cusine. He did, however, have discerning taste buds, and nothing she cooked so far has been unpleasant. But he had no favorites from her creations, unlike with Watanuki. Doumeki referred to those customized meals as the "greatest hits" and it used to amuse him to end whenever Watanuki would make a big fuss about making them but the end result is always so delicious. And that's why no matter how much Watanuki claimed to hate him, Doumeki disbelieved it every single time because, clearly, one would never cook such scrumptious dishes for someone he doesn't care about.

Thinking about seeing Watanuki again made him increase speed as he walked, moved by the anticipation.

Maro and Moro tugged at his hands as they led him to the receiving room. They were as lively as ever. When the three of them neared the sliding door, Mokona jumped into his shoulder and Doumeki greeted him, saying something about his recent purchase of bourbon which he plans on bringing next time so they can finish it in one sitting (Doumeki would like to see Watanuki get dismayed over that; his and Mokona's high alcoholic consumption was the only thing these days that bothered Watanuki, when Doumeki gets to see his carefully cultivated calm demeanor slip a little, and he could glimpse the teenage boy he once knew).

It was only when he entered the room that he noticed Mokona was unusually quiet. He got off his shoulder and skipped until he reached Tsuyuri's lap. Doumeki was about to take a seat but found himself looking at Tsuyuri and he couldn't understand the expression on her face at all. Her eyes were downcast and the plate before her was empty. He was going to ask her if there was a problem but then Watanuki came in with his hands full.

He looked just as exquisite as he remembered him from last night. Has it really only been a short span of time since Doumeki gazed upon him? It couldn't have been because right now it felt like he had been sorely deprived of Watanuki's presence in ages. The seer looked so darn pristine in his yukata which had appealing shades of aquamarine and maroon, and adorned with small yellow flowers. Doumeki can't will himself to look away from his exposed neck where he had loosened the collar, which he suspected was something Watanuki purposely did to catch his attention. Well, now he has it. What does he want Doumeki to do about it?

Watanuki met his eyes and smirked. The sight of his smugness over the fact that the other man coveted him so obviously made Doumeki's stomach violently flip. He tried to calm himself down although he knew his pulse continued to race the more Watanuki got closer.

Maro and Moro rushed to get the plates from him.

"Careful, little ones," he remarked. "I had the food warmed up so they might be hot. We don't want to burn ourselves now, do we?"

"Master is funny,"

"So funny,"

"He knows we don't burn,"

"We're not made of mortal flesh."

"It was a joke, my dearest girls," Watanuki chuckled. "Now, now. Make sure you don't crowd the table so make the arrangement as neat as possible," he glanced up to look at Doumeki. His eyes traveled from his face then down to see his feet. Doumeki felt self-unconscious all of a sudden, and was about to inquire what piqued his interest when the seer replied.

"You look so dashing with your crisp sea green shirt," Watanuki's compliment was an intentional display to confirm that he had been listening to Doumeki's thoughts earlier.

It made Doumeki's face burn in both shame and pleasure. Watanuki smirked again. He moved toward the table and gestured at Doumeki with an elegant hand, "please, take a seat. We've been waiting."

The two men sat down as Maro and Moro finished laying down all of the plates with food, and the teacups. They announced in chipper voices that they will get the tea, and then they giggled all the way down the hallway. When it was quiet again, Watanuki spoke.

"What took you so long?" he pursed his lips together and Doumeki swore it was an attempt to pout at him.

It distracted him for a little bit but then he answered, "I was called to a meeting. It was very last-minute. But I came straight here as soon it was over. Were you both waiting so long?"

"Not at all," Watanuki placed his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands while steepling his fingers together. "I hope you don't mind but I actually ate ahead. Kohane-chan has outdone herself. Her Ethiopian dishes are absolutely enchanting."

Doumeki turned his attention to the girl in question but she hasn't moved. Getting worried now, he asked, "are you feeling okay?"

No response.

"She doesn't mean to be rude," Watanuki reached out and tapped Tsuyuri on the shoulder.

As if being roused from sleep, she lifted her chin and blinked before her. She turned to look at Doumeki.

"I'm sorry, Shizuka-kun," she said, "I was just resting my eyes for a bit. I had quite the day in the kitchen."

"I offered to help," Watanuki remarked.

Tsuyuri shot him a look. "I appreciate that but I managed to accomplish everything on my own after all."

"And I'm so grateful for Kohane-chan's hard work."

"You're always welcome, Kimihiro-kun," she sounded stiff when she said that. She tore her gaze from Watanuki and addressed Doumeki this time. "What was the meeting about?"

"Just some boring stuff," Doumeki absentmindedly answered. He was getting uncomfortable, and it bothered him that he was unable to figure out why. Tsuyuri didn't press with the conversation and opted to serve the food. Both he and Watanuki watched her pick out the servings for their plates in silence and none of them took initiative to start dinner conversation. Mokona wasn't participating either but he stayed close to Tsuyuri the entire time.

Finally, Tsuyuri said something. "This one is spicy," she raised a spoon covered in red sauce. "But I want you to try it and tell me what you think about it."

She was leaning close, offering for Doumeki to taste the spoon. He inclined his head towards its direction and flicked his tongue over the spoon as Tsuyuri pushed it gently between his lips. This had been a natural thing for them to do since Tsuyuri started using his kitchen whenever she stayed at the temple. Every time Tsuyuri is unsure of her flavoring, she would have Doumeki taste it. It didn't occur to either of them until after it was done that Watanuki is their present company and they both turned their gazes to see how he would react.

The seer sat there with his hands still on his chin, but now he had his pipe out, and he puffed at it as he stared at them. His expression was inscrutable, veiled with something that wasn't easy to decipher. Finally, he leaned back and held the pipe away as he blew the smoke to the side. His eyes never left them.

Doumeki spoke up first, "do you want to try it too?"

"He already has," was Tsuyuri's dismissive reply as she leaned back down on her own chair. She placed the spoon on the left side, and then stared at the empty plate in front of her.

"You're not eating," Doumeki remarked, also refusing to touch his own food unless she got some for her own.

"I'm not hungry," she muttered weakly. Slowly, she placed her hand on her right temple, wincing.

"Tsuyuri," Doumeki leaned close to take her hand. "What's wrong?"

"Kohane-chan overworked herself,"

Across them, Watanuki looked unaffected. He was holding his fork and picking out the vegetables before he placed them in his mouth to chew. "But it had all been worth it because this is really delicious!" he beamed at Doumeki.

Doumeki doesn't understand why Watanuki would rather flaunt his enjoyment of the meal than express worry over whatever is happening to Tsuyuri. It made no sense why he was being so insensitive?

Watanuki suddenly groaned and unmistakable annoyance crossed his features. "Oi, Doumeki," he began as he tapped his own temple with two fingers, "I read minds now, remember? There is no need to be rude. I am taking note of Kohane-chan's distress as we speak. Do you think me insensitive? Really?" He turned behind him and called out, "Girls, bring me some aspirin. It's in the cabinet inside my bedroom."

Tsuyuri has by now started slumping on her chair. Doumeki pushed himself off the table instantly, and cradled her back before she could collapse to the floor. Watanuki was not looking at them and was instead busy shouting at Maro and Moro, wherever they are, "did you see the bottle? I think it's in the second shelf. Please hurry up."

But there was no hint of urgency in that instruction at all.

"I don't think this is some common headache," Doumeki observed as he tried talking to Tsuyuri, rubbing her back firmly to keep her conscious. "Are you still with us? Tsuyuri, please answer me," he then took both her hands and squeezed.

Still unfazed, Watanuki took another puff from his pipe. He blew it out to the side and stood up. "I'm sure she will be all right. I think it's fatigue, that's all. She shouldn't stress herself next time."

Glaring now, Doumeki said, "You are awfully relaxed for someone who should be more worried because a friend is in pain." _Besides, she did all this hard work for your benefit._

He was thinking that so forcefully that he had no doubt Watanuki heard it. He could see how his eyes momentarily hardened and for a while Doumeki was afraid he crossed the line. Watanuki never liked it when people, especially those he cared about, burden themselves for his sake. But then Watanuki's face relaxed again and he simply shook his head with a small smile on his lips. Doumeki wasn't sure how to feel about that. Something was wrong here. It wasn't merely that he couldn't get through Watanuki; it's that Watanuki is somehow refusing to care…

"Stop that," Watanuki scolded him lightly. "It's hard for me to turn it off when you're basically shoving your thoughts on my head. I get it, I get it."

He took a step forward and kept his eyes on Tsuyuri for a few seconds and then Doumeki spoke up again.

"Please," he said, "She's in pain. You have to help her."

"In pain, is she?" Now Watanuki reached out towards Tsuyuri. His hand rested on her shoulder. "Here," he said as he leaned down to whisper to Tsuyuri as he offered his pipe to her. "Breathe this in."

Doumeki was about to scold him, nervous that the effects of the opiates may harm Tsuyuri than actually help her. But Watanuki had placed his hand behind her head now and urged her gently towards the direction of the pipe. Doumeki could only watch helplessly as Tsuyuri parted her lips and the silver slipped between them. She inhaled.

She pushed the pipe away when she coughed, but Watanuki offered it again, soothing her with his other hand rubbing her on the nape. After some hesitation, she obliged again and took another puff. And another. And another. Thin wisps of smoke encircled the three of them but Doumeki also noticed that she was looking much better than earlier. Color was returning to her cheeks.

"That's a good girl," Watanuki cooed before he completely disentangled from her. He took another hit from the pipe himself and when he noticed Doumeki watching him, he offered it to him.

Doumeki was appalled but he didn’t show it. He shook his head and focused on trying to help Tsuyuri stand.

"Can you walk?" he asked gently. "Let's get you home."

"Won't you stay instead?" Watanuki interjected, crossing his arms in front of him. "I'm sure Kohane-chan can handle herself now."

Doumeki shot him another glare and was about to say something but then Mokona, after being so silent the entire time that Doumeki almost forgot he was there, interrupted and said, "I can go with her. You stay right here, Doumeki."

Mokona jumped into Tsuyuri's arms and she caught him easily.

Watanuki seemed to approve of the idea, judging by the way he uncrossed his arms and then clapped once. Afterwards, he reached for Tsuyuri again. His hand on her shoulder was gentle, but there was no warmth to his touch. Tsuyuri would've shivered.

"Go home," he told her simply. His tone was mild. His face was calm. But there was emptiness Doumeki cannot explain, a lack of the usual affection Watanuki treated Tsuyuri with for years. It left Doumeki cold as he stood there watching, and curiously racked with guilt.

Why was Watanuki acting like he couldn't be bothered with Tsuyuri, as if her mere presence was a nuisance? And why was Tsuyuri speaking to Watanuki before in a way that's almost disrespectful? Did something happen while Doumeki was gone?

Tsuyuri was already walking away, clutching Mokona to her. Doumeki was going to at least see her out so he followed behind. It was the shortest distance yet Doumeki could not bring himself to ask and Tsuyuri didn't seem like she wanted to talk either.

It was Mokona who broke the silence.

"She'll be okay with me, Doumeki," he assured him. "Besides, he needs you more so stay behind, okay? Talk to him."

"What aren't you telling me?" Doumeki asked.

But Mokona was adamant. "Talk to Watanuki."

Tsuyuri didn't even bother to say goodbye not even when Doumeki tried to take her hand. She just backed away from him and then opened the door. She stepped outside without a word and left.

 

**xXx**

 

  
Doumeki wasted no time and didn't care to hide his anger.

"What," he took crucial steps forward to where Watanuki sat on the chair, still smoking his damn pipe. "What," he repeated again, gritting his teeth, "the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Change your tone," Watanuki didn't even look at him. "I don’t appreciate it."

He ignored that comment and went on. "Why are you being so difficult? And why did you dismiss Tsuyuri's pain like that?"

"She wasn't in any mortal danger," Watanuki replied, finishing the last of his opiates in the pipe. After blowing out smoke, he added. "It's just fatigue. Why are you fuzzing over like some single mother? She's not a child anymore. So stop treating her like one."

Doumeki just can't believe this is happening. Watanuki still wouldn't see the error in his behavior earlier, and it's so shocking that he would speak out of turn like this, especially regarding Tsuyuri's welfare.

"What happened with the two of you while I was gone?"

"Oh, that," Watanuki placed his pipe down the table and finally looked at Doumeki. "The girl and I had a little argument over something trivial. There is no need to bother yourself with the details. And if it's so important to you, I'll find a way to make it up to her next time. Let's just not waste the rest of our evening talking about something that doesn't concern you anyway."

"But it does!" Doumeki slammed his hand on the table. He is very affected about this and it damn well concerns him.

Watanuki's eyed hardened beneath the glare of his glasses. "Why? Who do you fancy yourself to be, Shizuka, her knight in shining armor or some other oudated chivalrous shit like that--"

"Why do you talk this way?" Doumeki grabbed him by his shoulder and shook him.

Watanuki pushed him off and stood up. He was still inches shorter than Doumeki but he was more intimidating now, and he bore his eyes right into Doumeki as he said, "Why not? Am I not allowed to be honest? Should I continue walking around on eggshells and put on a show out of consideration of Kohane's feelings and yours? Do you expect me to stay perfectly well-adjusted? Is that what will make you drop this conversation? If I just lie and tell you that everything is fine?" Angrily, he took off his glasses and threw it across the table. "Take a closer look, Doumeki! See through my eyes since you and I share one anyway!"

His rage was terrifying. Doumeki could even feel the shop shake with the mere tremor of his voice. 

Watanuki grabbed Doumeki by the collar and dragged him down. His voice shook as he continued to speak, breath hot on Doumeki's skin. "This choice. This life. This imprisonment. This goddamn shop. Losing Yuuko. Losing everything. Not dying. And all the waiting. And outliving you. And Kohane. Himawari. All of you. All the ordinary people outside this place coming here, wishing about things with prices they can't always afford but pay for anyway!"

The strength of his grip loosened and he closed his eyes now, whispering, "Time blurs everything for me in here. Not just in the shop but here inside my mind. My powers grow and I can't keep up. When I do keep up, the things I am capable of overwhelm me. And now I can read thoughts and it's so beautiful…and so terrible to listen to what people think when they can't say it."

Doumeki encircled his arms around him and pulled him close, refusing to let go just yet. He listened patiently as Watanuki kept talking.

"I had a wish," Watanuki was tearing up so he buried his face on Doumeki's chest. "I had a wish that was granted and I traded things…people...who could have made me happy. I owed Yuuko-san everything. And I think I mistook that gratitude for love. Oh, but I do love her though...I love her, I love her, and I ache everywhere because I miss her so much. But I honestly didn't know then that trying to get her back means waiting for a long time.

He looked up at Doumeki, right into his eyes and breathed out. "I wished for something I wasn't ready to live with."

Doumeki doesn't know what to say. There is nothing he could say. So he ran his fingers through Watanuki's hair and kept looking into his eyes. With his other hand, he intertwined his fingers with the hand that was still grasping at his collar. Watanuki's tears flowed and stained his cheeks and he looked so miserable and so devoid of hope that Doumeki knew he can never appease his sorrows and shouldn't try because for the first time since he saw Watanuki cradling that dead cat, he cannot do anything but at least stay…stay as long as time permits him and before Watanuki loses him forever to the curtain call of mortality. Doumeki tightened his grip on Watanuki's hand and bent down to kiss his cheeks. He tasted the tears and they stung his lips.

Watanuki's eyes widened as he asked, "You were there?"

Doumeki blinked at him and then Watanuki added, "You saw me by the river with that poor thing. I just felt you remembering that memory. I saw it through your eyes." He cupped Doumeki's cheeks now. "Tell me, and tell me honestly. Did you stay by my side all these years because you don't want me to end up like that?"

He wanted to answer but his voice won't come out. And Watanuki kept talking, "Is that why you chose to hold on when I fell from the school building even as you bled? Why you chose to exorcise that spirit woman? Why you stayed for ten hours in the rain, digging into the dirt as you prayed for me to come back? And then you gave me half your eyesight and most of your blood. And then you kept coming around in the next six years when anybody else would have moved on by now." He shook his head and chuckled shakily, "my god, did you really love me that much?"

"I still do," Doumeki finally admitted. "All I ever wanted was…to be your friend. So I made a choice."

Watanuki smiled and he looked like himself again. "And now?"

"Now? Now I want to be with you," Doumeki took his hands and kissed them, "…if you'll have me," he murmured.

Watanuki closed the distance between them by pressing his lips against his. Hungrily, Doumeki kissed back. He squeezed his eyes shut and emptied his thoughts. He focused on the heat of the other man's body and his mouth. He wound his arms around Watanuki and pretended they have the rest of a lifetime together, that Doumeki won't leave him alone someday, that nothing else existed outside of this perfect moment. The rest are only white noise against the beating of both their hearts in harmony at last.

Neither pulled away just yet, not even to breathe. They kissed until their lips went numb. When their mouths did part, they still embraced, resting their foreheads against each other's. Several minutes passed as silence enveloped them completely as if in the safety of a cocoon, and if they could just stay in it, none of the pain or the horrors have to be real.

But Watanuki broke the spell first and pulled slightly away. "Come with me," he said, "I want to give you everything tonight."

There was no need for haste as both of them savored peeling off each other's clothes, and celebrated the slow unraveling of flesh that followed. Doumeki opened his mind when he felt something prickly making its way between his eyes. And then there was a momentary electric shock as Watanuki melded their minds together. The seer pushed him gently into the mattress and asked for permission to try something. Doumeki could hear the excitement in the other man's voice so he breathes out a faint 'yes'. And then Watanuki burrowed that prickly sensation into his head again and his stomach started to churn with something akin to dread but mixed with the pool of arousal. Like a fine precision instrument, the needle-like sensation pierced through his subconscious as he listened to Watanuki speaking.

"I want you to think about your fondest memory of me," he whispered into his lips and then the same mouth traveled down his body, leaving indentions behind as Watanuki's hot breath melted every surface of Doumeki's skin he can get access to.

Doumeki thought about that time when he ate Watanuki's Valentine's chocolate. He remembered the silky smooth sweetness of the treat and in the next few seconds, he can literally taste it again. He widened his eyes when it happened and then he felt Watanuki licking his lips and then slipping his tongue inside. As soon as he did, warm liquid chocolate poured into Doumeki's mouth. He jerked up, almost coughing with the unexpected entry.

"H-How are you--how did you do that?" he asked, growing restless yet nonetheless very aroused.

Watanuki only smirked. "Do you want me to stop?"

"Fuck, of couse not!" Doumeki pushed Watanuki on his back this time and kissed him with bruising force, hoping to chase more traces of the chocolate. Watanuki wrapped his legs around Doumeki's hips and rocked gently against him. Doumeki began to remember the first time they met. Watanuki was going down the staircase and he tried to kick him upon seeing him.

The seer beneath him chuckled and pressed the needle into the tough spot of that memory and altered it. Instead of trying to land a kick, the Watanuki in this new version rushed down to topple him over and when they fell to the ground, he was bequeathed with a searing kiss. Doumeki writhed as he experienced that and Watanuki started clawing his back with his nails as he thrust up against Doumeki again and again and again until his muscles began to throb and hurt.

Doumeki responded back by thrusting down his cock between the seer's thighs while Watanuki was recuperating. The friction was too rough so it hurt a bit to thrust but Watanuki took note of his discomfort and reached down to hold his cock to steady him first as he rubbed the inside of his thighs with his other hand. He muttered a string of unfamiliar words that in Doumeki's lust-fogged mind believed to have been an incantation of sort. Watanuki slowly raised his hips to meet Doumeki's cock which he was still clutching around his fist. He brushed its length between his thighs which had become surprisingly wet with something akin to oil.

They tested how it felt and for a few thrusts Doumeki was starting to develop a rhythm but then Watanuki pushed him off and made him sit down, one hand on Doumeki's shoulder while the other was wrapped around his cock. Watanuki said something again and before Doumeki could figure out the language he spoke, the seer aligned his entrance with Doumeki's cock and rolled his hips once to receive the length awaiting below. There was resistance on the first push, but Watanuki lifted himself up a little and then slammed back down. Doumeki sank within him in a breathlessly miraculous way that made him feel heady.

Now fully sheathed, Watanuki moved with deliberate intent, setting the pace of their lovemaking with confidence. Doumeki could only grip the sides of the seer's hips as he grinded upwards, trying to keep up with the ride as if his very essence depended on its completion. Watanuki was so quiet. Only the rapid squelching noises of penetration and Doumeki's ragged breaths filled the space.

"Fuck," he muttered low, almost biting his tongue after a particularly hard thrust.

"Mm, yes."

"Huh?"

"Yes, you're fucking me, Shizuka." Watanuki squeezed his shoulders and thrust down, almost choking the air between them as he muttered, "finally, finally, finally" in time with the thrusts.

"I think," Doumeki licked his lips. His throat feels like sandpaper. "I think we're _augh_! doing more _augh_! than _hn_! that!"

"Oh…?" Watanuki slowed down and ran his fingers through the other man's hair. "What do you mean by that?"

"You're memorizing me," Doumeki said, his eyesight now unable to focus. "You want your body and not just your mind to remember me forever. So you want me to etch myself in your skin, deep inside you like this, and everywhere else…maybe with my teeth--"

And he bit into Watanuki's shoulder, gnashing his teeth.

"Oh, yes!" Watanuki slammed back down. He raked his fingers through Doumeki's hair and murmured words of temptation as he sped up the rhythm of their dance."Please…treat my body as your canvass and paint me some bruises. Leave me scarred." He slowed down for a bit to catch some breath and in between short gasps, he continued to speak. "Give me these violent imprints…so every time I gaze on them…I can revisit the memory with my telepathy…and imagine your cock," he rolled his hips forward to emphasize his point, "..still buried inside me like this…" he leaned down and murmured, "…your mouth on mine, your tongue…"

He kissed Doumeki deeply as if draining him of his soul.

Watanuki pulled back and whispered shakily, "and you will forever taste of chocolate in the memory of my mouth."

Doumeki was going crazy and he couldn't get enough of it. He flipped their positions and rolled Watanuki to his back. Without losing momentum, he slid his cock back inside and pounded on him as deep and hard as he could. The bed shook beneath them. Watanuki gripped him by the buttocks as he pushed back, writhing and murmuring his name like a prayer over and over. Doumeki almost collapsed completely on top of Watanuki, his cock throbbing with a burst of wet heat, and the strength of completion almost destroyed him, turning the rest of his limbs into rubber. The sheer force of it was enough to make Watanuki come moments after. As he did, he grabbed hold of Doumeki's mind and washed him all over with his own orgasm, flooding his mind with the pleasure of it, a relentless big tidal wave that literally cut off Doumeki's air supply for a few agonizing seconds.

He fell asleep soon after and woke up with Watanuki by his side, his head on Doumeki's chest. 

"Don't feel bad," Watanuki muttered and moved his head closer to the crook of Doumeki's shoulder. "I gave you quite the work-out. I might have knocked you out unconscious for a while there."

"Did I really instantly fall asleep?" Doumeki cleared his throat and moved his arm to bring Watanuki closer, "That's pretty embarrassing, actually."

"It has nothing to do with your stamina or prowess, Shizuka," Watanuki sighed before he continued, "It's my power. I was embedded in your head while we were midway through it. So when I said I knocked you unconscious, it wasn't a hyperbole."

"It wasn't on purpose, right?"

"It's hard to say," Watanuki kissed his cheek. "Sometimes I do things without thinking. Instinct kicks in and the next thing I know I'm..." 

Suddenly, he pulled himself away from Doumeki and sat up. Doumeki tried to do the same but his body won't obey.

"...I think she won't ever forgive me."

Doumeki froze. Slowly, he asked, dreading the answer. "Do you mean...Tsuyuri?"

No response.

"What did you do, Watanuki?"

Still nothing.

Doumeki lifted himself up and placed a gentle hand on Watanuki's shoulder. He tried again. "Kimihiro?"

The seer finally looked at him. His mismatched eyes look hypnotic with the dim light from outside emphasizing and concealing them all at once.

"Can we please...please not talk about her?" he wrapped his arms tightly around Doumeki and sighed into his hair. "I want this moment to be just about us. For once, I want to do a selfish thing and I want to do it because of you."

"Kimihiro..."

"I want to be selfish about you, with you," Watanuki looked into his eyes now. He is so young and alone, and Doumeki loves him. 

"Okay," Doumeki slowly laid back down the mattress and Watanuki followed, resting his entire weight on top of the other man. 

"Shizuka?"

"Yes?"

A chuckle. "Nothing. Just...feel like saying your name. It's so stupid. Just go back to sleep."

"Hm," Doumeki tightened his embrace around him. "Good night...Kimihiro."

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

Doumeki didn't see Tsuyuri the next day at the university. He had the strange feeling that she was avoiding him. He had gone to her classes to look for her, and none of her friends was sure where she could have gone. But she was at the university; just purposefully hiding from him, and it frustrated Doumeki. As happy and content as he was last night to have Watanuki in his arms at last--and again, this morning, when he woke up to find a breakfast tray next to him--he couldn't stop thinking about what Watanuki might have done to Tsuyuri that he deemed unforgivable. It made him so nervous and preoccupied for the rest of the day. He tried his best to set aside the thoughts when he was still inside the shop, in fear that Watanuki could pick them up, and it wasn't the most difficult thing to do, considering Watanuki had been showering him with affection before he went to work. It was almost comical and uncharacteristic, but he wasn't complaining. It was pure domestic bliss, Doumeki mused, and he had no qualms in keeping that kind of life with Watanuki forever. 

 _Forever_ , Doumeki gave it some pause, testing the idea over and over until he was sure it was truly what he desired. 

 _Forever with Kimihiro Watanuki_.

But first, he had to find Tsuyuri and talk to her. If Watanuki won't explain what happened, he would confront her instead. Doumeki might have to help them reconcile and work things out. They have to. Tsuyuri and Watanuki are both so important to him, and they are just as important to each other. Neither could stay mad at each other for long. Doumeki was sure there is always a way and he will find it, for the sake of all three of them, But it would seem that Doumeki didn't need to find Tsuyuri at all. She was at the family temple all this time. She sat there in a bench facing one of the large trees in the yard. Her state of solitude softened Doumeki as soon as he saw her.

Warily, he approached her. 

"Tsuyuri?" he wasted no time and sat beside her.

"I'm sorry," she began speaking without preamble, "I wasn't strong enough."

"What does that mean?"

Tsuyuri looked at her hands on her lap and was quiet for a while. Doumeki waited patiently. After another few seconds, she spoke up again.

"We're losing him, Shizuka."

"That's not true," Doumeki tried smiling to reassure her that nothing stays broken forever, especially not when it came to what the three of them have. He debated whether or not to already start telling her about what happened last night after she left. He was dying to tell her that he and Watanuki--Kimihiro--are now in a relationship, but it doesn't mean her exclusion. He wanted to tell her that Kimihiro was finally honest about how he truly felt about his wish and how depressed he had become about his curse of immortality, how sorry he was for hurting Tsuyuri, how he's willing to be happy with Doumeki. He wanted to start talking about all of these things, to share them with his truest friend, but then Tsuyuri looked directly at him and forced him to listen to her side of the story.

She talked about Kimihiro's strange behavior these past few months which Mokona has explained in detail to her as they walked back to her house. Tsuyuri also told him about the 'dream lapses' that Kimihiro had been having; his inability to differentiate between dream and reality, and how this is tied to his opiates and the supernatural effect they have on his constitution. She said that he had been indulging in traveling the dreamscapes with far more frequency than what is healthy, and Mokona believed that it's distorting Kimihiro's perception into something oppressive if not dangerous.

Finally, Tsuyuri told him about the woman Hisako. She told him her wretched tale and the price she was willing to pay to exact revenge on her brother-in-law for raping and impregnating her. A soul for a soul, an exchange that Kimihiro should not bargain with. She told him Kimihiro had considered her request and sent her away to think about things, but Tsuyuri was worried that Kimihiro will grant the wish once the woman finds her way back to the shop.

Doumeki had to interject, "No, he won't do that. I know Kimihiro. We both do. He will reject that woman's wish once she returns."

And Tsuyuri--beautiful, melancholy and insightful Tsuyuri--began to cry.

There was barely any sound. Her tears just leaked from her eyes and soaked the back of her hands which were now clenched into fists above her lap. She couldn't look at Doumeki anymore. He reached out for her easily. His hands found their way on her cheeks, wiping the tears away but they kept pouring down.

She cried for a good two minutes and Doumeki held her through it. Once she was able to recover, she gently pushed herself away from his embrace and looked at his face again with those red and puffy eyes. She had never looked so old and helpless than in that moment.

"Kimihiro-kun used his powers on me last night," she explained, her voice shaking, "He did something to my mind...it felt like he was cutting through it with a sharp object, something akin to a knife...no, a thick needle of some sort. It was delicately inserted here," she pointed between her eyes. "I could feel myself going numb and cold. He didn't let me go for what felt like a lifetime. He was angry at me for talking about Yuuko-san. He said I didn't know her as well as he did. He told me I should know my place and..." Tsuyuri breathed out and then closed her eyes.

"...he did something else to me but I'm not really sure. But after that, every time I look at you," she slowly opened her eyes again, "I feel this sense of shame. It's as if I can't trust you." She reached to touch him but then thought against it. Her hand hovered in the air as her eyes widened with fear. "I want to disbelieve and disprove it, I really do. But in that moment, I was at his mercy, and I glimpsed at what Kimihiro Watanuki could do and it was...ugly."

Doumeki couldn't hear this anymore but he can't move. He can't just walk away from her. He can't leave her when she's so vulnerable. But he also didn't want to believe her even though he knew in his gut Tsuyuri will never lie about something like this. Cautiously, he tried touching her but then she flinched.

"Tsuyuri..." he trailed off, trying once again to put his hand on her. He rested it tentatively on her knee. He could feel her trembling in his grasp.

"I was so scared," she was murmuring, "I kept replaying that moment over and over and it hurts so much. It was definitely still Kimihiro-kun but there is something else underneath it, something cruel and malicious. And it's consuming him. And it will keep consuming him until..."

"Stop," Doumeki's grip on her knee hardened. "Stop talking like that. Just stop."

 "I'm sorry," Tsuyuri finally put her hands on his shoulders but the contact was light. Her fingers were just grazing him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know this isn't what either of us wanted. We were expecting for something bad for a long time now, but how could either of us know that it'll be something so much worse? And that it's already happening."

"We're not going to lose him."

"Shizuka, listen--"

"No," he took her face in his hands and pulled her close. "You listen!"

She blinked rapidly, tears filling up her eyes again. Doumeki wasn't sure what to say or what to do. 

The pain and terror in those eyes.

_She is so close._

The many truths he had to process.

_Tsuyuri needs me._

Losing Kimihiro not just forever but to a darkness he could never comprehend or save him from.

_We only have each other now._

"Shizuka," Tsuyuri sounded like a wounded animal. "Shizuka, please, I'm sorry you had to find out this way but maybe we can still..."

_Kimihiro had hurt her. He had hurt Kohane._

Doumeki leaned closer and captured her lips with a kiss.

_Kohane is..._

Tsuyuri went absolutely still. She might have even stopped breathing, but then Doumeki instantly tore himself away from her as if burned.

He stared at her, shocked and confused.

_I care about her too._

"Shi...zuka?" she could only murmur as she watched Doumeki get up from the bench. Their eyes lingered on each other for a searing minute before he started stepping backward. A moment of brief understanding passed her features as if she knew what he was about to do now. Seeing that, Doumeki turned away from her and headed to the shop.

 

**xXx**

 

He burst into the doors and passed by Maro and Moro who didn't bother stopping him on his tracks.

"Shizuka?" Kimihiro was in the hallway, probably on his way to the storage room, but Doumeki didn't notice all of that until later. Right now he had grabbed a fistful of his kimono and pressed him against the wall.

"What have you done?" His voice was shaking. He was enraged. He was in pieces. Doumeki had never felt a mixture of conflicting raw emotions like this before and it's a suffocating mess which he was sure he might pass out of if he doesn't hold his ground.

Kimihiro just stared back at him, his expression incomprehensibly blank. It's as if this confrontation doesn't shock or terrify him at all.

The man he had been in love with, the man he thought he could give up everything for and was more than ready to, just tortured a girl they both cared about, and acted so casual about it moments later during dinner. Last night he had telepathically violated her and treated her like she was trash, and then he got angry and started venting about mistakes he should have realized sooner. Afterwards he seduced Doumeki into bed with him, all the while refusing to acknowledge the atrocity he had committed against their friend--

"ENOUGH!" Kimihiro--no, Watanuki--didn't touch him but Doumeki was slammed against the wall across them. He collapsed to the ground but as he tried to get up, he could feel the pressure of Watanuki holding him down using nothing but that...fucking...needle!

Doumeki groaned and placed his hands on his temples, trying to focus on anything else but the pain.

He looked up and saw Watanuki towering over him, his eyes mad.

"Did you think I was faking it with you last night?" he growled. "Did you think I simply manipulated you to have sex with me by telling you a tale of woe?!"

He raised his left hand and tightened it into a fist. Doumeki felt something snap inside his mind. He was on all fours now, trying to breathe.

The entire shop shook. The foundations quivered. Everything became hot and claustrophobic around them.

"Don't even deny it because I heard it, damn you! I heard what you just thought seconds ago!" Watanuki stepped closer and grabbed Doumeki by the collar now, dragging him up to meet his gaze. The puncturing sensation in his head became bearable for now but Watanuki's accusations hurt a lot worse.

"How dare you belittle my suffering!" Watanuki was crying and shouting into his face. "I revealed everything to you last night. I shared myself wholly. You made me believe you love me. You got me to trust you enough to open up and talk about how much I regret this life I chose for Yuuko-san's sake and I--" he swallowed and then pressed on, "--I finally became honest for the first time in years about how I really felt about you--that I really, truly, deeply, stupidly love you--and you thought I was just using my pain to get you to pity-fuck me!"

He let Doumeki go and he fell to the ground, still unable to move.

The needle stopped burrowing. 

Watanuki had his back turned.

Doumeki stayed there on the ground, breathless and could not feel his own body.

Seconds passed.

A whole minute.

And another.

"Kimihiro..."

"No," the seer turned to face him at last. "You don't get to call me that. You don't get to call me anything."

His face wasn't stained with tears anymore. The shop dropped a few degrees in temperature.

"I'm sorry," Doumeki tried standing up. It took effort but he was able to do it. He met Watanuki's eyes as he rambled on, his voice hoarse and sounded like it didn't belong to him at all, "I was angry at what you did to Kohane, and my mind just...I was overcome with my bitterness but I didn't mean to think those things at all...I made a mistake...please. You frightened me. You frightened her. Please. Please don't do this."

"Kohane," Watanuki spoke softly, gazing at Doumeki with half-lidded eyes. "Yes, you should probably start calling her that now. After all, you did just kiss her."

Silence. 

The most unendurable stillness that Doumeki has ever experienced.

"Please," Doumeki bent down to kneel. He felt so lost and pathetic. He could die then and it would have been sweet release. "We can't end it this way. Watanuki, please listen to me. I'm sorry for everything. I do lo--"

"If you say it," Watanuki took a step forward. "I swear I will make sure you never speak again."

Doumeki just closed his eyes and for the first time began to cry.

But Watanuki just stood there, unmoved.

Another minute passed.

"Go home," Watanuki demanded.

Doumeki stood up, gathering the last amount of strength he has. Without restraint, his last thought flowed between their shared minds. _But you were always my home._

Watanuki's eyes sharpened with cruel unease. The next words he spoke aloud might as well have been acid thrown right at Doumeki's face.

"I never wanted to be."

The tone was soft, too mild to hold any seething emotion but the very lack of it felt like a knife shredding through the ribcage and puncturing the heart. Doumeki's knees weakened. He was ready to collapse again but Maro and Moro were pulling him away and his feet suddenly don't belong to him and he was moving toward the door.

As he watched helplessly while his view of Watanuki shrunk the more he walking away against his free will, the seer raised his left hand and with a languid motion of steady fingers, he cut through the telepathic ribbon between them. It was like a fuse in his mind short- circuited. The pain that followed must have been immense, but it was over before he could feel the rest of it.

Doumeki was now standing outside in the sidewalk, staring at an empty lot before him, a deserted patch of land between two ordinary skyscrapers.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After brutally severing his connection with Doumeki, Watanuki allows himself the opportunity to dine with an old friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to split this chapter into two after all because I realized so many climactic things are about to happen at this point, and I don't want to overcrowd them in one reading session for you guys. Last chapter was too much grief and I need to allow y'all to breathe and recuperate. Hence, this chapter. This is dedicated to [selene_ermingarde](http://archiveofourown.org/users/selene_ermingarde/pseuds/selene_ermingarde). ENJOY!

 

 

**221: The Razor's Edge**

* * *

 

 

 

 

_Did you see it?_

_Was that really me? Did I really do that?_

_Oh, I was so good at it._

_I’m mortified._

_And strangely proud of myself too._

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

It almost feels as if he was being scooped hollow, but the pain is the only thing that Doumeki left him with, and its dark traces cling to his every crevice like soot. It chokes Watanuki, makes him want to claw at his chest, even rip out his own guts. The pain—oh, the pain is a more pleasant alternative to the nothingness he had been cradled in for the last six years. Watanuki is a little bit grateful to agonize over it instead of giving in to the numbness of drugs and the allure of dreams. The pain at least makes sense to him now; it helps him remember that his heart still beats, that he is capable of tears and loss and grief. But it is nothing like losing Yuuko.

Losing Yuuko is merely an accident, some misplacement that occurred in another dimension, in a borrowed space. If Watanuki has a time machine and the right coordinates, he knows he can get himself out of the loop of her absence and open the doors of the wish shop and find her languid, exquisite figure draped across the sofa, and her half-lidded eyes will be puncturing through his very soul once more.

Losing Doumeki is a choice. Not one he made, of course not, but one that has been made for him because he can never pay the price of claiming the other man for his own. So, naturally, it hurts. Watanuki wants him, so terrifyingly and tangibly, that something dormant and hungry has emerged from the depths, and it won’t be ignored any longer. He has no idea how to begin satiating it and it’s a scary albeit also an exhilarating feeling. Watanuki is confounded by the unsteady flickering of a million emotions binding him, breaking his bones, as they seemingly tighten their hold around him to prevent any leakage of blood and guts and filthy impulses.

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

The woman named Hisako comes to him a few hours after Watanuki banished Doumeki from stepping foot inside the wish-shop. For his part, Watanuki isn't sure if the punishment will be permanent. Right now, he finds it hard to care.

Words are barely exchanged between the seer and his customer for the first three minutes since her arrival. Neither tries to strike a conversation. Hisako sits there on the mat, her hands clutching each other in a possessive manner that Watanuki is content watching as he enjoys his opium. The room that surrounds them is a vacuum; there are no sounds or visible movement other than theirs.

The waiting is all there is.

When Hisako finally looks at his face, her eyes are barely focusing and Watanuki returns her stare with a well-rehearsed apathy. He blows the smoke right across her, and the wisps of it circle her, engulfing the rest of her body, making her look like she is an apparition. Still, neither speaks.

Eventually, it is the woman who gives up. She utters, “I’ve thought about what you said,” _Pause_. “You were right.” _Pause_. “I will risk losing everything either way.” _Pause_. “And I can’t have one foot forward and the other backward. It just doesn’t feel right.” _Longer pause_. “I need to commit to a choice and just live with the consequences.”

Watanuki is barely paying attention. His face feels numb. His teeth feel as if they have all fallen off. He could barely keep his eyes open. He shifts from his sofa and crosses his legs. Inhaling the contents of his pipe deeply, he lets his eyes drift close and empties his thoughts about Doumeki and Kohane. His joints begin to ache somehow, and the twinge in his chest feels as if it could leave bruises on his ribs. When he opens his eyes again, he finds Hisako standing with purpose now, her eyes watering with fresh tears. He raises his eyebrows at her, unmoved by her despair.

But he decided he should probably say something to her now. “And you have come to a decision, I take it?” he sounds bored. This is a critical moment in a human being’s life—a human being whom he lured in his shop. He should care.

“Yes, I’m ready to make that choice.”

But should he really care? Watanuki sighs. He doesn’t want to look at her anymore.

He rubs his temple with his fingers and asks, “And what is it?”

“Will you grant my wish?”

Obviously, she’s willing to pay the price of her unborn child in exchange for the death of her rapist. She wouldn’t be here if it isn’t what her heart desires.

People are so predictable.

Watanuki places the pipe down and slouches further into the comfort of his sofa. He blinks wearily at Hisako, watching her without comprehension for awhile. After a minute or so, he explains, “The price you will pay is someone else’s future. To eradicate an existing present, you are offering that child inside your womb—” he nods at her clutching her stomach, “—and the potential she can be. You are robbing her of a chance to live and create her destiny.”

He knows the caution will fall on deaf ears. Why does he even bother?

“That is a hefty payment to trade away for some petty revenge…”

“Petty?!” Her eyes are now marred with rage. “This is his spawn growing inside me!”

“Are you sure?” Watanuki cocks his head to the side, regarding her with cold eyes. “Have you gotten a paternity test? Maybe it’s your husband’s after all.”

Hisako gets quiet as she answers, “Oh, I’m sure…”

Watanuki blinks at her for a while and then he smiles. “Ah, I see.” He waves the pipe in a casual gesture of epiphany. “Your husband hasn’t been intimate with you since the rapes started,” he shrugs his shoulders and adds, “Could it be that he knew—”

“YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH!” Enraged, she balls her hands into fists and looks as if she is ready to hit him. Watanuki surprises himself by how her reaction amuses him.

“HE LOVES ME! HE KNOWS NOTHING! And I know even if he did, he will still love me and forgive me. But I could never put him through that! SO YOU SHUT UP!”

Watanuki opens his mouth, not really to apologize but to calm her down at least.

But she persists and shouts, “I bet having magic is so convenient! You probably never have to fight for anything you love! So what the fuck do you know?”

 _Well_ …

Watanuki doesn’t like her tone (and the crudeness of her language). He certainly doesn’t appreciate the misplaced anger directed at him. In fact, he has enough of people accusing him of being a bastard. He doesn’t have to sit here and take it, certainly not from her, the ignorant mortal bitch. So he _tsks, tsks, tsks_ at her warningly before he raises his index finger to point at her. As soon as he does, he begins to drill a thick needle between her eyes.

And just like that she stops speaking. She chokes and writhes. And then she falls to her knees, clutching at her throat, staring wide-eyed at the floor.

“I would not condone your lack of courtesy, madam,” Watanuki walks to her, still pointing his index finger into her skull like a precision instrument. “This is a place of business and I am a professional. My services aim to accommodate customer needs, whatever they may be, but I truly dislike rude and entitled people who think they can shout me into submission,” he bends down to look at the horror in her features. “Such a sad, pathetic woman you are….”

He drills two inches deeper into her subconscious until he finds the memory of her going inside a clinic, carrying a paper cup inside a plastic bag. She waits in the lavatory for half an hour before she gets the uncontested genetic proof regarding the child’s father. Watanuki not only sees her joy but feels it. It was a dark and sticky stain that twisted her smile into a malicious sneer as she makes a choice right then that her brother-in-law and his spawn should die.

Satisfied, Watanuki lets go of her mind.

The physical relief instantly hit her like a miraculous breath of air. She gasps aloud and sobs, ripping herself off the floor and then steps away quickly from Watanuki, but the abruptness only made her stumble back into the ground.

Her fear of him is potent. Watanuki can taste it. It tastes like charred meat at the back of his throat. He relishes on it for a moment, and then he smiles at her.

“So, Hisako-san,” he says, “What is your wish?”

She is still having difficulty breathing normally but she nods her head in acquiesce and replies between short breaths, “I, wish—for, for, Shirou Iwata…” she pauses, gulps down and then says louder and firmer, “—to die.”

Watanuki walks nearer, taking his time to approach her.

_You’re unable to swim in your bottomless sadness. Let me be your raft._

He leans down and cups her chin with soft fingers.

_I will help you, you poor, deluded woman._

“And I shall grant your wish,” he offers.

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

_It terrifies me how it's so easy not to care._

_Have you ever felt this way sometimes?_

_When was it?_

_When you decided you just don’t give a damn anymore?_

 

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

This is how Jorougumo found the dream seer, a prisoner of the wish-shop; all contorted and almost twisted beyond recognition. He allows her entrance, to visit him without barricades inside his lounge, to even come close without the spirit fox’s protection. In fact, Watanuki has cast a spell to keep Mugetsu locked in his container, fast asleep and ignorant of what is about to take place. It must have been his arrogance and his mood for self-annihilation that entice her into his shop tonight, and he welcomes her with a grim smile which she narrows her eyes at.

“Something has dimmed your light, cutie,” she speaks softly as she lowers herself to her knees, posing half her body in a coiled position as if she is ready to crawl all over him any moment now. “Your eyes, mismatched and kind, are my favorite things. I tasted one of them for myself after all,” she raises her hand to her mouth and gently sucks on one finger before she adds, “their colors are still mismatched as ever but now they are also…” she begins to slither nearer, “…less kind.”

And he laughs aloud humourlessly at her remark, throwing his head back. She stops coming close for a moment, her blank black eyes questioning his reaction. Watanuki recovers swiftly and gazes at her, licking his lips. She is watching more intently now.

With practiced hands, he begins to undress before her, maintaining eye contact the entire time as he sheds his yukata. The exposure of his flesh does not shame him. He knows he is desirable, not just because of aesthetic reasons. Magic—a potent, consecrated intensity—oozes from him, and if he isn’t inside the protection of the wish-shop, certain spirits would want to feast on him right now. Also, peeling off his clothing is somewhat helping him breathe better. After all, he is beginning to despise the way the fabric of Yuuko’s old clothes hamper his fluidity these days. It seems to weigh heavier than he remembered.

But memories are tricky, and there are things even his body wishes to forget forever.

_Like Doumeki’s touch—_

_Our bodies interlocking, fitting together snugly during sex—_

_The sound of my name on Doumeki’s mouth—_

_His taste—_

_Our tongues sliding on each other, creating heat—_

_His love—_

_Doumeki’s lips on Kohane’s—_

_Doumeki’s love turning into distrust and fear—_

_My rage—_

_An earthquake—_

_His face—_

_The tears—_

_And still I can’t forgive—_

Watanuki shivers in spite of himself but has learned to ignore the cold air prickling his skin. He sits there before Jorougumo with his head held high. As soon as his naked torso is on display, she sits up erect and places a finger against her shiny red lips. Her eyes are bottomless dark pools as she peers at him with curiosity.

“You’re undergoing a most delicate transition,” she almost whispers the words. “It’s a cosmic car crash, cutie. And you’re steering the wheel right into the abyss.”

“Are you surprised?” Watanuki pulls the smoke-pipe from his side and bites down on it. “Weren’t you the one who told me that it’s impossible for me to stay human as years go by? And you were so right. I’m feeling less and less involved in the mortal world. Well,” he chuckles as he lights the mouth of his pipe, pausing to take small puffs until the tip was engulfed with a tiny red-orange blaze.

He breathes out and talks at the same time, “except that I developed a liking for piggybacking through humans’ thoughts and energies using my mind,” he uses his free hand to gesture at his temple with two fingers. He smirks. “In a way, it’s the one thing that keeps me connected in this wretched plane of existence. It’s not a habit I wish to break anytime soon.”

“Who says it needs breaking, hmmm?” she cocks her head to the side. “Powers like yours should be savored."

With a coquettish grace of a cat in heat, Jorougumo places her palms on the floor and then slides them across him, the tips of her nails almost reaching his lap, and the motion stretches the rest of her limber body, giving him quite a lovely view of its unbelievable hour-glass shape. She looks up at him, her lips widening into a coy smile. “Powers like yours should be shared…”

Watanuki watches her with calmness that disguises the brutality brewing within. There is a strong part of him that wants to grab hold of her neck and press so he can etch his fingertips onto her tempting skin. He is able to quell the thought as he responds, “I’m not exactly as generous as you mistake me for.”

“Not anymore, you mean?” She blinks up at him, and her feign of innocence was like the sensation of sharp nails scratching a rough surface in Watanuki’s telepathic channel. He almost winced. “Aren’t you the boy who would risk his own life for the safety of someone else’s? Didn’t you value others more than your own orphan self?”

“Oh?” he smiles at her but his eyes might be doing another thing. “Was I ever so selfless back then? Or did I simply lack the confidence and fortitude to claim my life as my own? Then I must have been such a challenging little shit. Yuuko-san must have had her work cut out for her.” It was a mistake to mention her. His throat hurts.

Jorougumo notices it quickly enough and is kind enough to provide a distraction. She lies on her back now, still stretched across him, and then crosses her legs together. Her black dress slides down a few inches from this angle, revealing her white thighs. Watanuki finds himself looking at them with unhurried contemplation and he knows she is enjoying the attention. Neither of them speaks for another interval.

“Why am I here, shopkeeper? I have no wishes to grant.”

“Why, I wonder.”

“Sly boy, you’ve grown up to be a deceptive, lecherous man now, haven’t you?” Jorougumo pushes herself from the floor to look at him sideways from her left shoulder blade. Her voice is still soft but there is an unmistakable edge to it as she remarks, “Cutie pie, we both know you were the one who brought me here, reeling me in with the threads from your own web...” she chuckles and adds, “…do you wish to make a prey of me, my young fool? Clearly, you underestimate my own wickedness.” Her eyes seem to darken, if it is even possible.

For his part of this exchange, Watanuki simply leans close and rests the weight of his chin on his palm. He inhales his opium once, twice, then breathes out the delicious smoke right across her. With tenderness, he burrows the thinnest and longest needle he could create right into her skull and allows it to stick out from her gold-spun hair. She doesn’t even notice it as she keeps her eyes fixed on his.

“I didn’t bring you here to disrespect your status, you beautifully spiteful creature,” he answers with a dismissive gesture of his palm, “I bring you here to partake in an ordeal which could be very enjoyable for you.”

“What sort of enjoyment does this ordeal provide, hmmm?” she smiles again but Watanuki could feel the tremor of her suspicion from the needle he implanted on her head. She is cautious and distrustful, and it doesn’t bother him one bit. Emboldened by the secretive nature of his newfound skill, Watanuki pushes in another needle telepathically into her skull right next to the first one. She now looks as if she has an antenna and he is almost tempted to laugh but doesn’t.

“I met with a customer some nights ago,” Watanuki tries to remember how much time has passed since that particular encounter but draws a blank as expected. Everything has been bleeding as one giant mess of events that Watanuki can’t distinguish individually anymore, and it doesn’t bother him one bit. “She desires revenge, one very consummate and final. Her wish is the death of another person and she has the means to pay the cost.”

Now Jorougumo turns her entire body to meet his as her face brightens up with uncomfortable glee. “And what is the price?”

He inhales another hit and then blows the smoke away from Jorougumo. “I will tell you later. After all, I did invite you here for another reason.”

“Which is?”

“The pleasure of your company, what else? And you are so gracious to grant it,” Watanuki stands up, still unmindful of his nakedness. “I suppose there is still a matter of how we can make this night both memorable for us…” he pauses, and then: “...perhaps a stroll across a dreamscape of your own choosing?”

“Dream travel?” She looks shocked enough for it to be genuine. “I have little experience with that. It’s something I have not tried before, mostly because the opportunity is nonexistent.”

“Not anymore,” Watanuki offers his hand.

She takes it and stands up. Afterwards, she feigns a blush and squeals, “Oh, I’m thoroughly flustered now! Look at what you did!”

Watanuki chuckles and squeezes her hand. He takes note of the eager way she wraps her own fingers around his, how her nails almost dug through his skin—but it doesn’t bother him one bit. She takes a few steps closer now to seal the distance between them and in spite of the softness and brevity of their kiss, it wasn’t any less heady. He could feel the chill in his spine, and the urge to smother her with his hands has gotten stronger especially now that her pretty neck is within his grasp.

He speaks up before he could dwell more on it.

“Come, my sweetly poisonous mate. Let us savor and share this moment together.”

Jorougumo giggles as she bats her eyelashes at him and the sight of her wiles was sickeningly tantalizing. “Yes, cutie, let’s. But first…let mommy have a little snack—”

She engulfs his naked body in a triumphant embrace as she catches his ear between her lips and bites down on it. Watanuki allows the intimate sensation of her nails to sink into the flesh of his hips as she pushes him with savage purpose onto the tatami mat. He falls with a soft landing, eyes gazing up with a hollow understanding of the debauchery that’s about to occur, and braces himself with her exploration that is anything but quick and painless. He bleeds into the mat from his ear and from the other portions of his flesh that she penetrated with teeth and claws.

The pain from the wounds she inflicted revitalizes him and so Watanuki finds the strength to wrestle Jorougumo on her back, pinning her wrists down. Without warning he buries himself inside her awaiting passage. His cock has hardened earlier during her violence without his notice, and now he intends to exact punishment by using it on her. As he thrusts in, in, in, he relishes on the way she curls her legs around his hips and on his back, including the additional appendages of her true arachnid form. He enjoys the sounds of her rapid moans upon each thrust, and the steady clutch and release of her claws behind him which have been peppering his back with cuts and slashes. Jorougumo even giggles every now and then, and the look of awe in her expression is flattering. Suddenly, she digs her claws into the marrow of a few of his bones, and licks the blood as it pours out, like her own small and horrifying fountain of red. Watanuki sneers. Though he knows a powerful incantation to close up that bothersome gnash, this feeding ritual is a tad wasteful.

_She should have asked my permission first. But a bitch will always be a bitch._

Jorougumo may be the spider but this is his lair, and he will be nobody’s prey. In a show of dominance, he pierces her with more of his needles—on her arms and multiple legs, on her heaving breasts, on her throat, her shoulders, and each digit of her hands and feet. By the end of their vicious mating she now resembles a pin cushion. Now Watanuki laughs, especially when she never even noticed.

He proceeds to murmur the incantation so he could heal, all the while still applying more needles into her face this time. Jorougumo never noticed.

“Will you tell me about the price the customer you spoke of must pay?”

“The soul of her rape-borne child,” Watanuki answers with his eyes closed, concentrating hard on piercing a needle through her tongue as inconspicuously as possible. He kisses her and urges the needle through using his own tongue.

Jorougumo laughs, low and foreboding. “And what exactly is my role?”

“A spider’s grudge is a commendable curse,” Watanuki traces her jawline with a finger, leaning away to look into her eyes carefully. “You will curse a man named Shirou Iwata. Seeing as he’s a rapist, you should infect his cock with boils which may or may not cause it to fall off. Just a helpful suggestion.”

“You are wicked,” she coos into his embrace. “And learning the many varied and frightful ways of the dark arts.”

“And,” Watanuki continues, massaging her shoulder with his hand, “in exchange for your service, you shall be paid with the child’s soul for your consumption.”

Jorougumo looks up at him, eyes so black there can never be any spot of light in them. “You intend to feed me with the soul of an innocent? My, is this a courtship, oh-falsely-named April Fool? You must be very fond of me indeed…”

Watanuki sighs into her hair. “Do you accept the deal?”

“I might…” she licks her bloodied lips. “But what is my price to pay?”

He pauses but doesn’t answer.

She insists, “Granting her wish does not need my outside expertise. The shop can already take care of that since the price she paid is enough to execute her revenge; the future of one’s soul for the destruction of another. The balance is struck.”

Jorougumo sat up and eyed him suspiciously. “So why would you offer me a role in this tragic little play of yours?” she smiles, condescending and arrogant, “…unless there is something from me that you must have?”

“You’re a quick study,” Watanuki remarks.

“And apparently, cutie, so are you.”

Watanuki stands slowly and crosses the other side of the room. He faces her and grins fully while raising his hand. For a few minutes he just lets that hand linger in the air without a trace that the exertion was tiring him. Several seconds passed before he conjures in his palm a ball of blinding light. He tightens his fingers around it, careful not to extinguish it in his grasp, as he slowly brings down his hand to offer it to Jorougumo. She looked utterly mystified by its sight that she was unable to speak for a moment. When she finally found the words, she said:

“What is the price you require of me so I can be granted this precious nourishment?” Her voice is shaky, underlying her lust and excitement. She has never looked more of a predator than in that revelatory moment.

“I haven’t thought of it yet,” Watanuki attempts a shy smile, “why don’t you indulge first and then we’ll see what appropriate payment you can offer in return?”

Jorougumo narrows her eyes at him. She gazes down at the soul between them with an uncharacteristic affection softening her face. One may mistake it for something maternal but Watanuki recognizes it as nothing but unadulterated hunger.

“Go on, my beauty,” Watanuki brings the soul close to her, his fingers curling around it almost seductively. “Feast and be merry. This is my gift to you.”

She looks unconvinced for a moment as she rests a finger against her ruby lips, deep in contemplation. He adds, “Once you consume this, Hisako’s revenge will be granted. The spider’s curse will be enacted immediately.”

“Is that so?” Jorougumo raises an eyebrow. “It seems to me that you have thought this through.”

“I have plenty of time,” Watanuki takes a step forward, still enticing her with the child’s essence in his merciful clutch. Jorougumo winces but he can smell her arousal as well. She can no longer deny her hunger.

“You are irresistible when you want to be, seer and wish-granter,” Jorougumo finally reaches out for his palm, curving one finger around the pure essence he holds, “and so very generous. I haven’t had my fill of children’s souls in a long time. And it has been too long. I...ache for it so terribly—”

Without another preamble, she snatches it from him and holds it by framing her claws around it as if she’s trying to enclose it inside a fragile vessel.

She looks at him and says, “Consider it done. This Shirou Iwata—his cock will fall off.”

They laugh.

As she prepares for her meal, Watanuki just smiles at her, looking on almost kindly as she lifts up the soul in reverence and then puckers her lips. Graceful and agonizingly slow, she sips the essence like a drink and it descended into her lips willingly. From this angle, it looks like she is kissing it.

Watanuki watches her in silence. Once she slaked her hunger, she turns to grin at him in gratitude. He grins back, but mostly because she still looks like a pin cushion—and a very happy one at that. He savors that irony for another moment or two before he raises a finger and widens the girth of each needle buried in her body. One by one he takes his time expanding the needles until she is reduced into a shaking container of frayed nerve endings. He takes pleasure in the levels of transformation depicting her different yet very intense reactions; from shock to denial; from disdain to rage, until, finally, all of these delicious feelings coagulated into the one he longed for the most: _fear_ —instinctual and absolute. Oh, she is so beautiful right now.

She has never looked more of a prey than in this moment.

Jorougumo collapses on the floor, her body still riding through the erratic spasms of his surgical work, long after he pulled out the needles, which he has done so one by one again in an excruciating and patiently sadistic manner. He takes out all of them aside from the one pierced in her tongue. He leaves that for decorative purposes.

Watanuki looks down at her crumpled form and says, “Now, about the payment…”

He waves his hand swiftly, and the dozens of needles dissolve into a thousand little ones. They move to claim his prize.

“You know, my lovely whore,” Watanuki whispers, “I don’t think I ever forgave you for eating my right eye.”

The needles burrow into her socket and Jorougumo opens her painted lips into a silent scream. Watanuki fills in the silence, speaking low, “I’m not being cruel, am I? I did procure you that scrumptious child soul. That should last you for, shall we say, seven decades? Eight if that soul was meant to have lived until eighty years of age.”

Jorougumo tries to take out the needles but Watanuki uses his telepathy to grab hold of her mind and squeeze. She can’t move any of her limbs.

“You told me once that a Zashiki Warashi’s heart has special properties,” Watanuki goes on, “I’m thinking, as a spirit creature, any part of your body may have some use as well. Your heart could potentially be a great ingredient for some enchantment. But I have no interest in that. Taking away your heart would kill you.”

The needles are pulling out Jorougumo’s right eye now. Upon his command, they collectively form into a spear and throw themselves at Watanuki.

The surgically removed eye rests on his palm now.

“I don’t want to kill you, my paramour,” Watanuki adds, “I need you to live.”

He raises the eye dangerously close to his mouth. “I need you to live with that horrendous new look on your face. You see—well, as far as your left eye can—I would not simply take away your sight. I meant to steal away even the physical organ itself. I think a cyclops-like spider lady would be a novelty, don’t you?”

Watanuki gestures once and her body is ripped from the floor so she could sit up and face him. “Now,” he says, “where are your manners? I fucked you and fed you and offered you a way to travel in dreams. I still intend to fulfil that promise, so don’t you worry your pretty head about it. Now, what do you say?”

Jorougumo must be glaring but the impact was hardly intimidating. Not with one eye.

“Oh dear,” Watanuki laughs. “You can’t honestly be so sullen. I thought you would be proud. You were right about me. You were right about everything.”

He laughs a hearty one now, letting the bliss of accomplishment take over; allowing all the suffering and self-doubt of his former self wash away. When the mirth passes, it is replaced by renewed purpose. He clears his throat. Staring into Jorougumo’s single eye, he places the other one he stole into his mouth and gulps it down.

He smacks his lips together.

“Delicious.”

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

_I don’t want to live this way._

_I’m turning into something I don’t think anyone could ever love again._

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watanuki wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, everyone! This chapter was a real downer. I'm sorry if I end up dampening your holiday spirits, but I did try to put some tender moments in there between Watanuki and Kohane. Only one final chapter to go! Stay with me. It will get better.
> 
> Sometimes I do worry about the fact that while everyone has been writing so many fluff and feel-good fics here in the DouWata tag, I on the other hand keep messing up things. Sometimes I hate myself for it, and go read the updates for the _Restaurant_ AU or _Cardinal Directions_ (sometimes even re-read Lacertae's ongoing _Takane no hana_ series) because those fics make me feel better after I finished writing a chapter for this piece. I suggest you do the same too! They're all such lovely stories.
> 
> One day, someday, I will write a happy AU fic or a fix-it fic...
> 
> ...nah, I have three more upcoming stories that are just as painful and angsty again. Because that is how I roll.
> 
>  
> 
> _I hate myself._

 

 

 

**391: The One No One Sees**

* * *

 

 

 

 

_Some days, I don’t know what to do._

_And some days, I just do what feels right…_

_…even when it’s probably wrong._

 

**xXx**

 

 

Every morning since she attended high school, Kohane Tsuyuri wakes up two hours early before her first class just so she can prepare her adoptive grandmother and best friend their breakfast and lunch respectively. Every once in a while she makes extra servings that she can set aside and heat up later on when she could afford to stop by the wish shop and visit Watanuki.

Today is not one of those days.

The only thing she was able to do earlier was to cook her grandmother breakfast as usual, but after what happened to them in the temple a few days ago, Kohane hasn’t spoken to Doumeki nor has she crossed paths with him at the university. She buries herself in school work instead when she volunteered to become a research assistant to one of the professors in the history department. It gives her the perfect excuse not to walk home with Doumeki anymore, or to stop by the shop much later—not that she would be welcome to enter his premises anyway. Still, it is rather presumptuous of the little girl to think that. If she would just come here, Watanuki will tell her personally of the difficult circumstances she just put the two men through due to her insolence. She was and remains responsible for Doumeki’s exile. That’s not up for debate. She is the one to blame. If she wasn’t such a prissy little tattle-tale, the three of them could have remained civil.

The three of them could have had dinner again and Watanuki might even be in his best behavior. Instead, she left him no choice but to snoop and watch her from a distance, lowering the frequency he uses that enables him to hide as he follows her every move. It’s been three days since he started this, and he’s become relentless.

That afternoon after he’s done watching Kohane, the dream seer lingers rather morosely outside near the hydrangeas, with a fan on one hand and a bottle of whiskey on the other. He’s been pouring the alcohol on the flowers, drenching the earth beneath them. He mutters a small incantation to sanctify the whiskey before he drains half of its contents into the petals and stems of the appalling hydrangeas, all blue and purple and oh-so-pretty that he’s so tempted to burn them all. He could—oh, he could—but he won’t. He still values some oaths and the one he guaranteed to Ame Warashi is one he will not break. Perhaps he should contact her somehow, have a little bit of fun with her.

But Ame Warashi seems so uptight, however. She may not be as open to proclivities like his lovely whore Jorougumo had been the other night. Watanuki considers momentarily if he should make Ame Warashi enjoy herself with his company, but decides in the end that possessing her won’t be nearly as worth the trouble. She’s not a tempting prize to have. None of them are, not even Jorougumo.

Of course, none of them were _him_.

“Fuck,” Watanuki shakes his head, grimacing. He takes a huge gulp of the whiskey afterwards and ends up staining one of Yuuko’s more luxurious kimonos as he sloppily drank it all down. He then hurls the bottle against the invisible barricade of the shop’s entrance where it shatters without a sound. Watanuki laughs at that. He finds it absurd that he’s not even allowed to hear the sound of something breaking.

From out of a corner, Maro and Moro readily hands him another bottle, this time of white wine. Watanuki glances down at their faces as he gives them his fan and takes the bottle. He blinks abruptly—did they age somehow? He thinks to confirm this by touching their faces but seeing the traces of strong devotion and affection in their childish gazes as they stare openly at him like this prove to be an annoyance so he sent them away with a sullen wave of hand instead. They sing merrily to themselves as they skip their way back into the shop. Watanuki stares after them and smiles, almost wistfully. He remembers the warmth of their embrace during those first months of Yuuko’s absence; how they held him together for as long as he needed it.

He sighs and looks across the shop where the entrance lay bare. There are no people in the streets. He begins to walk closer and stops right where the barricade is the strongest. Using the bottle he was gripping, he taps it twice. No sound—no actual discernible shape or size—but Watanuki knows that the barricade was there. He lowers the bottle and uses his free hand to etch his fingertips into its clear surface, writing his name—his false name—before he takes a few steps back. Still gripping the bottle tightly, he smashes it where his handwriting may have been. In spite of the silence of the impact, his body instinctively coils. Watanuki holds his position and watches as the wine’s translucence soaks the hem of her kimono’s sleeves and he chuckles. He does not let go of the broken bottle completely, and simply lifts his left arm to lick his wrist, tasting the wine that kisses his pulse as it trickles down.

He raises the bottle upwards to look at the damage more closely and in better light. The glass looks as if it sprouted tiny veins that remind him of cobwebs, and he finds the pattern utterly mesmerizing. He wants to touch it so he presses an index finger into the sharp edges of the broken thing and cuts himself. Watanuki looks at the wound and the blood and smiles in content. He then brings the bottle into his open palm and burrows it there. It crunched as it enters his flesh.

Watanuki feels giddy and light-headed. The shiny contrast of the glass against his pale skin, and the sheer amount of blood overflowing from his palm where the shard was buried in looks as if he’s cupping his very life force in his hand, and it is an uplifting sight. He raises his hand to the sky and stares as the blood runs down his wrist and into her kimono sleeves again.

_Did I look as beautiful as this before when I fell out of that window?_

Watanuki presses his bloodied hand to his chest and closes his eyes. He lowers it down so he can stare at it again. With his other hand, he pushes the glass shard deeper into his skin. He only stopped when he hit a bone, or at least he thinks he did, because there is an outpour that followed next and the ground beneath him had a growing red stain next to his bare feet.

“Oh my,” Watanuki says as he squeezes his hands together to apply pressure, and then he mutters a healing spell under his breath.

Almost ten minutes may have passed but he is still bleeding. Watanuki stands there, disappointed but also quite amused of the result of his spontaneous self-mutilation. He tries again a different spell, a more painful incantation that requires cauterizing the wound. It burns like nothing he has ever felt before but Watanuki refuses to make a sound as the pain surrounds his entire being. It lasts only for a minute and the blood finally stops leaking from his palm. He opens his eyes (which he only realizes he had closed during the process) and looks down at his hand.

There is an orange and black pattern on his skin like small molten lava rocks congealed together on his bone and marrow. He watches it glow for a while, still mystified, before the energy fades slowly. Once it disperses, the glass ejects by itself and falls beneath him. All that is left now is a faint and serrated scar on his palm. Watanuki frowns at it. He prefers the gaping wound and the river of blood, honestly.

But whatever.

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

Every late afternoon at school, Kohane Tsuyuri has her math class as the last subject of the day, and it’s taught by Misaki-sensei, a woman with stylish short hair and red-framed glasses that only serve to accentuate more the warm pair of brown eyes behind them. She regards Kohane with an open smile each time their gazes would meet from across the whiteboard to her seat where Kohane would visibly—but not consciously—squirm. Watanuki’s astral presence hovers above Kohane’s head, sometimes counting each stubborn curl of hair, and sometimes entering Kohane’s consciousness just enough to see Misaki-sensei through her eyes.

He could feel her fawn over the woman’s slender fingers that grip the whiteboard marker as if it was a fine instrument meant for something else other than writing complicated equations in front of class. Misaki-sensei would turn to the students and ask them questions, but Watanuki would catch her glancing in Kohane’s direction more often than she would the rest.

Watanuki also feels the fondness that woman has for Kohane, and the carefully hidden but explicitly latent desire coming from that Misaki-sensei like a sticky adhesive on skin. He observes the woman more closely and it dawns to him that she resembles a feminine, older—if he was allowed to grow older—version of himself.

No wonder why Kohane is so enthralled by her.

Watanuki resents Kohane for it, and reels his astral self back into the shop where his imprisoned physical body waits. He has an inexplicable headache after, and a lump in his throat that could almost choke him dead. He blames Kohane for everything, and falls back into the empty dreams that leave no impressions.

Hours later he wakes and finds a black marker to write down all the names he can remember about people, places and things; some he can recall with clarity while others are vague or crooked in his mind’s eye as they manifest as images, if not forever lost to him. He kicks off her kimono aside and writes these names on his skin until he is filled with vivid but hurried markings on the surfaces of his throat, his collarbones, his chest, his stomach, his arms, and hands and thighs and legs, and even the soles of his feet. He turns around and lies on his stomach and asks Maro and Moro to paint him with the words they know, and they happily obliged his request. Watanuki closes his eyes then and focuses on the silky sensation of pen running across the expanse of his back, and the strong scent of its ink assaulting his nose. He likes it. He hates it. Watanuki then recites other names he wishes to be memorialized on his flesh until Maro and Moro ran out of space to put them in.

They lie beside him after, and encase him in an embrace that is both familiar and foreign, humming wordless melodies as he is lulled to yet another cycle of sleep.

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

Some days after—well, who even knows, Watanuki owns no fucking clock or calendar—the dream seer finds himself inside the storage room, rifling through her letters and other outdated writings inside that peculiar box, home to all her mysterious friend’s other keepsakes. Watanuki reads one correspondence after the next, curiously unsatisfied of each content, discarding the papers rather abrasively into one corner and then to another until he is surrounded by colorful large confetti of written vows and expressions of sentiment and secret, none of them of interest.

Watanuki digs deeper into the box and finds more useless information about things he already knows about Yuuko and her inexplicable friend. He burrows his hands deeper and deeper into the seemingly bottomless box and finds nothing more. Without being completely aware of it, he collapses into a fit of rage and tosses the box against the shelves. He slams his foot down on it repeatedly and tries to enjoy the way his heel crushed the box, but realizes soon that it brings him no satisfaction at all. Watanuki gets over it and brandishes his smoke-pipe from the pocket of his old high school uniform which he began wearing again, comforted by how well it still fits him. He walks away from the devastation of his embarrassing tantrum and finds himself glancing at his reflection from one of the antique mirrors.

He looks mostly seventeen. His height, his frame, the smooth complexion of his face had never changed in the last six years. But his eyes—those mismatched abominations—they look old and angry and weary. They look like they belong to somebody else, somebody with a sliver of ice in his heart. The reflection of his heavy gaze stops him on his tracks as if a stranger has appeared from nowhere, and it made him so nervous he almost forgets he’s merely staring at himself. Watanuki stands there, letting the smoke-pipe fall from his mouth as he clutches it possessively in one hand and uses his other hand to trace the mirage in the mirror.

And he laughs, mostly because he doesn’t know how to else to react, and has grown uncertain on how to convey his exasperation and bitter contempt, so he settles for laughter. Watanuki doesn’t stop laughing as he walks away.

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

“Can I, really? Can I? Can I? ” Mokona sounds too shrill as he jumps up and down, up and down, up and down…

Watanuki almost wants to smack him just so he’d stop moving, but resists. Instead, he replies, “You’ve been bugging me about that particular bottle of bourbon. You finally wore me down, Mokona. So, yes, you may get it. Now let us drink.”

Maro and Moro imitate Mokona as they all hop together to fetch the alcohol. Watanuki rests his back on the wall and finishes the last of his opiates before the trio comes back with some of her expensive glasses and the bottle of bourbon in hand.

Watanuki swipes a hand to grab the bottle. He cradles the neck as if it’s a lover, and flicks his finger on the top twice as if knocking, until it suddenly pops and liquid just pours out and soaks his thighs. Watanuki chuckles but Mokona panics.

“You’re wasting it! So wasteful! Damn you, Watanuki!”

He laughs at the distraught Mokona and doesn’t bother to wipe himself dry, not even the obvious smug smile on his lips. “How is it that you’re not dead from alcohol poisoning? Is your constitution somehow purifying what you are drinking and turning it into water once inside your system?”

“That is a boring and unimaginative theory, and nothing I would expect from you, Watanuki, given your audacious performance pieces in the last few months.”

Watanuki hums once in response, not sure what to make of that statement. He has wondered every now and then what Mokona must think of the events that occurred lately. The creature leaves Watanuki to his own personal business and never once meddled, with the exception of walking Kohane home that night during dinner when she started feeling sick. Watanuki could only guess Mokona made Doumeki stay and talk to him, and that’s pretty much the only time Mokona intervened.

Watanuki glances down at the bourbon and sighs, almost sadly. He’s so exhausted and wants to go back to sleep but the dreams he’s been having lately are empty, and he is beginning to think that perhaps those empty intervals are what his waking world is composed of, and this one where he is interacting with other people is the dream. He’s never certain anymore. He may be a little scared about his muddled sense of reality, but that would mean he has to care a little bit, and Watanuki doesn’t have it in him to spare some of that. It takes effort to force himself to pay attention. It’s better to watch the scenes in his life play before him without pausing or rewinding some parts he wonders if he could change. There is freedom in not caring, never having to take responsibility, never being able to feel again.

Overcome by defeat, he raises the top of the bottle to his lips and gulps down some of the bourbon before he hands it back willingly. Mokona takes it without a word.

“So,” Watanuki says, “You have been very observant all this time.”

“Hard not to be when me and the girls are your only captive audience,” Mokona sounds surly. The edge on his voice is unmistakable. “You made sure of that ever since you dismissed Doumeki a week ago like he was some toy you’ve outgrown and no longer wanted to play with.”

“Caution, my friend,” Watanuki warns him good-humoredly, slouching further down the wall where he is leaning. “You shouldn’t speak of delicate matters that you have no capacity to comprehend. It’s none of your business, Mokona.”

“We’re not friends, Watanuki,” Mokona seems to glare at him although it’s usually hard to tell with the shape of his eyes. “The boy I offered my friendship to long ago no longer lives in this shop. He’s been replaced by you.”

Watanuki chuckles. This is all too amusing. He covers his mouth with a hand as laughter comes pouring out. Mokona says nothing to that so Watanuki speaks, “Don’t sulk. It doesn’t suit a creature of your age and wisdom.”

“I’ll stop sulking if you talk to Doumeki and Kohane-chan again.” Mokona balances the bottle now and pours the contents into the glasses, managing not to spill any of it in the process. Maro and Moro applaud him for it.

Watanuki takes a glass and looks at it for a while before he speaks again, “Things will work out. This is nothing but a temporary setback. Once Doumeki and Kohane learn their place, they will begin to deserve my forgiveness and companionship again.”

“Ho-ho, he thinks he’s entitled to bestow compassion on the friends he stopped deserving a long time ago…”

“Perhaps I should take away your drinking privileges. Clearly, the alcohol loosens your tongue and makes you say things out of turn.”

“Things I wouldn’t say otherwise if I’m sober?” Mokona pauses to drink his share. He burps aloud and then adds, “You’re one to talk. Have you ever not smoked? Honestly, Watanuki, you should only take that in moderation.”

“What would you know of moderation?” Watanuki gestures at the half-empty bourbon bottle between them.

Mokona gulps another down and burps again. “I suppose we’re all addicts here.”

“Yes,” Watanuki raises his glass, “and judgment belongs to our betters. From what I can see, we’re both equals. The pot and the kettle, as black as they come.”

Mokona doesn’t move.

Watanuki empties his glass and stares down at the bottom for a while before he bends down to reach for the bottle.

That’s when Mokona jumps and slaps Watanuki. The impact is sudden and Watanuki could only stare back, blinking rapidly.

“Oi!” Watanuki rubs his cheek, “No need to hoard it all to yourself—”

“That’s not why I slapped you, boy.”

“Then why?” Watanuki feels the anger in his lungs but his voice remains soft. “What gives you the right? Who told you—any of you—that I ever needed a keeper?”

Mokona is almost shouting as he steps closer to Watanuki. “You really don’t get it, do you? You’ve been perched high above inside that gilded cage of yours that you started to love your own prison. But you listen to me now! I need you to get your sleep-deprived, opiate-smoking, stubborn stupid head out of your ass crack, Kimihiro Watanuki, you masochistic April Fool!”

“Mokona…” Watanuki is unable to form coherent thoughts at the moment.

“You’re a depressed drug addict and, by the looks of what you did to the Jorougumo, a carnivorous rapist, who just pushed away the only two people in your life who love and care about you,” Mokona stares down Watanuki with a resoluteness that rendered the dream seer speechless, and even though Mokona resembles a small, stuffed animal with black fur, he never looked more intimidating than he does now.

He goes on with his lecture, “You’re a scared, young man who made an impossible wish years ago, and could never be normal. You never were to begin with. Now you’re standing at the cusp of real power but every time you get a chance to use it, you wield it like a weapon, cocksure of your aim but always missing the spots you should be paying more attention to. Remember that your magic is only as good as the intentions of your heart. And you haven’t had the best intentions lately either.”

“Stop talking—”

“No, you will hear me now, Kimihiro Watanuki!” Mokona stresses his false name and keeps talking, “I have watched you grieve for years. I have kept my mouth shut even when I should have spoken up. Maybe if I did, you never would have hurt Kohane-chan the way you had, you never would have broken Doumeki, you never would have granted that miserable woman’s plea for revenge, and you never would have lured the Jorougumo, debase her and have her consume the soul of an innocent as you feasted on her eye. You—” he points a stern hand at him, “are a disappointment, Kimihiro Watanuki. You have become cruel and cowardly and everything Yuuko never wanted you to be! And I will say her name as much as I want to! Don’t even stop me! Don’t even think about using your stupid needles on me!”

Mokona jumps back away from him, “Her name was Yuuko Ichihara. _Was_ , Watanuki. She is dead and gone, and you are alive and slowly disappearing yet again. She never wanted this. _You_ never wanted this.”

Watanuki just sits there, eyes now narrowed into slits. He is livid and he wants to do something permanently destructive.

But Mokona isn’t done. “You have the power to kill me. I don’t doubt that. You can even destroy this shop, if you want to. You can do anything and everything now, Watanuki. You’re strong enough. You’re certainly vicious enough. So? Do it!”

Watanuki blinks. His heartbeat is actually going faster than he anticipated since this conversation started. He doesn’t move an inch.

“You had love,” Mokona is speaking softly now, “You had friends. You had a life and you chose to claim it. You said you are ready to be your own person and not just some replacement, someone’s second-rate version.”

Mokona risks a step and pats Watanuki’s knee with gentle strokes, “Don’t you remember any of this, boy? Have the opiates dulled your memory so badly that my words hold no meaning for you now?”

Watanuki keeps his eyes on Mokona but is seeing through him, seeing past him. He holds his breath and listens to his heart beating madly. He doesn’t move an inch.

“Watanuki,” Mokona repeats his false name. “You are loved.”

_No._

“Doesn’t that matter to you anymore?”

_No._

Maro and Moro took his side. They crouch down and echo Mokona.

“You are loved, Watanuki.” One of them pats his head

The other takes his hand and kisses it. “Watanuki is loved.”

Finally, the dream seer speaks up. His voice is low, barely audible.

“Yes,” he breaks eye contact and examines his lap instead, “I am loved.”

Watanuki closes his eyes as his next words sting, “And then I ripped both their hearts out, just so I can watch their love turn black like tar.”

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

_I feel more than what I would have wanted._

_And I feel less than what I should._

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

“Let me tell you a story.”

He lay on his stomach as Maro and Moro begin scrubbing off the markings from his skin. It is taking a while, seeing as Watanuki used a permanent black marker to etch those words earlier. It has become a regrettable decision. Now they’re all just meaningless and faded smudges of ink as the girls continue to rub warm wet cloth all over his body to wipe them away. Mokona is speaking to Watanuki in a hushed tone but its sound permeated the entire room.

“Four thousand years ago or so, there lived a king who was blessed with everything. He grew arrogant as time went by, so the gods felt the need to express their dismay over his questionable activities which he merely tuned out. He rebelled against them and forged his own path. The gods created a warrior to bend the will of this arrogant king, one who is more beast than man. Once the creature is ready, he faced the king and fought him. It was a draw and the beast earned the respect of the king. Not even the gods themselves could have foreseen that these two will become companions.”

Watanuki faces the ceiling now as he replies, “I’ve heard this story before, I think.”

“As most heroes with their loyal friends by their side would do, so did the king and his beast. They had adventures and escapades. They weathered all obstacles fortune or the gods would throw their way. It would seem that the king has met his match in the beast, and the beast has succeeded in taming the king’s arrogance after all.”

“But you become responsible for what you have tamed,” Watanuki remarks.

“Yes,” Mokona agrees. “And the beast—now more man than mere simpleton creature—learns that truth all too soon.”

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

Watanuki cooks.

He puts each serving of food in a plate and leaves it on the table inside her lounge. He cooks and cooks until there is nothing left of the last batch of Doumeki’s groceries. He cooks because he knows that if he doesn’t, all the ingredients will rot. He cooks because it is the one thing he has never forgotten. He cooks because he doesn’t want to smoke or drink or fall asleep and be held captive by dreams. So he shuts his mind from the bothersome frequencies of ordinary lives outside, and allows his hands to remember the many ways to prepare pork and beef and chicken. He makes his own noodles and sauces from scratch. He bakes cookies and cupcakes and decorates them with cherry blossoms. 

Guided by the mixture of scents in the kitchen, Watanuki cooks and cooks and cooks until his body can no longer move in an agile pace that he often has to sit down on a stool and gather his breath. He sweats and gasps for air. He rests only for a bit before he gets up again to cook. The kitchen is filled with noise and harmony and Watanuki thinks that he may remember everything in his life again if he just focuses on these familiar tasks.

He walks to the lounge and places the servings neatly together and the assorted colors mesmerize him each time he steps closer to inspect each dish. He walks back to the kitchen and cooks again until there is nothing to cook.

Watanuki sits back on her sofa and watches the table before him where his hard work lay bare. After some time he gets up and walks closer, takes a pair of chopsticks and samples one of the breaded shrimps. He takes a spoon and sips the miso soup. He chews through the noodles and takes a bite of the cookies. He gets himself a cup of rice and starts devouring the rest. He doesn’t stop until he tried everything. He swallows almost mechanically. Finally, when he is satisfied with his feast, he puts back the chopsticks on the table and goes down to his knees.

He tasted nothing. His own food brought him no flavor to savor, or pleasure to enjoy. Watanuki could only feel the heat of the freshly cooked dishes by the time they reach his mouth, but none of their taste. Still, it’s not as if he expected any different.

He recalls a book in German that she has in one of her shelves inside the storage room. It’s about a man born with an acute olfactory sense that it’s almost superhuman how he can recognize and accurately describe and assign all kinds of smells available in the world. The trouble is he has no scent of his own. He begins to obsess about creating perfumes that could entrap human scent. He targets young girls and kills them. He tries all kinds of method to preserve their scents but fails. He did succeed in the end and the perfect scent he enclosed in that perfume bottle can compel anyone to love, and lust and lose their minds. As a final act of knowing himself, the man douses his entire body with the perfume and allows a group of vagrants to tear their way through him, all of them just starving for love and hoping to slake that hunger by consuming the man’s flesh.

Watanuki covers his face with both hands and sinks to the floor completely. He doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t dream. The wakefulness terrifies him like nothing has ever before.  And this is how Kohane Tsuyuri finds him.

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

She doesn’t come any closer.

Watanuki understands.

She speaks first.

“I came here to tell you that I know that you’ve been following me. I felt your presence every now and then. If you were hiding this invasion of privacy from me, then you weren’t doing a flawless job.”

He replies.

“Look at you.”

She says nothing.

He continues.

“Your eyes. Your beautiful, terrible eyes. And how you keep reaching out to me. That stupid way you cling to hope. Your relentless, never-giving-up…”

She speaks again. Her voice breaks when she does.

“What are you doing? Why are you doing this?”

He chuckles and pulls himself up to sit.

He adds.

“Look at you. And all the ways you could grow up…”

Watanuki stares across the room and meets her gaze bravely “…and outgrow me.”

“Kimihiro-kun,” she begins, “let us help you, please.”

“Truth or consequence,” Watanuki asks.

“I don’t understand—”

“Truth or consequence?” Watanuki repeats.

“What do you want from me?”

“Truth,” Watanuki begs, “or consequence?”

A pause.

An odd interval.

She answers him.

“Truth.”

Watanuki nods and begins.

“I granted that woman’s wish and she paid that awful price. I fucked the Jorougumo and fed her the unborn baby’s soul. I ate the Jorougumo’s right eye because she ate mine before. I’ve been reading Yuuko-san’s letters to an old flame. I want to meet this man she’s been so smitten with. I don’t recall what is real and what is not inside this shop, inside my head. When I go to sleep, I’m not sure I even wake up. When I’m awake, _when I’m sure_ I’m awake, all I want to do is sleep again.”

She takes a few steps closer, but not close enough, never close enough.

“Did you regret any of them?”

Watanuki is curiously out of breath as he responds.

“I don’t know.”

She tears up. He lets her.

He asks again.

“Truth or consequence?”

“Consequence” is her ready reply. She moves closer.

“I know about you and Doumeki.”

She stops coming close.

“I know he kissed you. I know he loves you. He doesn’t even know it but I do.”

She kneels down and meets his gaze evenly.

Watanuki keeps talking.

“I know that you love him.”

“Truth or consequence?” she asks him now, her voice hoarse.

“Truth.”

“I’m in love with you,” she whispers.

A secret.

“Even after you’ve hurt me and manipulated my thoughts about Shizuka so that every time he touches me, I feel so disgusted of myself—I still love you.”

A confession.

“Even after you’ve committed these heinous acts you spoke of, even when I know you actually don’t care who you hurt, or how skilled you are with how you hurt all of us—I still think you love me back.”

A bargain.

“Even when there is a part of me that loves Shizuka just as much, if I have to make a choice, I’d choose to be yours. If you’ll have me.”

Watanuki reaches for her then without any restraint or grace, and crushes their mouths together. She melts into his arms easily and allows herself to be pressed under his weight as he pins her arms down the floor and kisses her with brutal force. He pushes a knee between her thighs so he can part them. She keeps her eyes squeezed shut, tears gathering in their corners like dewdrops. Watanuki holds her by the slim waist, right below where her ribcage must have been. He could feel her heartbeat under his fingertips. He leans again for another kiss, this one soft and unsure and a little afraid. He whimpers and loosens his hold on her.

_Am I dreaming?_

Once she opens his eyes to peer at his face, Watanuki slides his consciousness inside her head so he could see himself through her frightened eyes.

He envied the light in which she framed her memories of Doumeki with, and now he wants to see for himself how Kohane Tsuyuri cherishes him.

What he saw through her eyes while she looked at him now where he hovers above her are hundreds of scribbled words—all of them bright, legible and alive:

_I care about you and **I love you** so much it’s hard to breathe. I love all the shades of your smile, particularly the ones I’m the reason for. I want to be an excellent chef like you. I want to know all your favorite foods, ones whose flavors you have forgotten and make you taste them once more. Let me love you. Let me take care of you. Don’t forget me. Please don’t leave. **I love you**. Stay with me. I’m here, Kimihiro-kun. Shizuka loves you so much it’s making him do things he would never do for any other person other than you. I miss Yuuko too. I miss you when I don’t see you as often as I used to. I think **I** really do **love you**. I wonder what you’re doing all by yourself in the shop. Does it hurt? Where does it hurt? How can I help? Let me in, Kimihiro-kun. You saved my life. You are my hero. You’re so beautiful. You’re so lonely. You’re not alone. You have me. Please stay with us. I don’t want to know what my life would be like without you in it. **I love you**. Can you tell us if you’re hurt or if you’re sad? I’m here to listen. **I love you**. What have you done? You’re hurting me. Where have you gone? We’re still here for you. Let us in. **We love you**. Tell us what you need. You’re still here. Where does it hurt? How can I help? Let me in, Kimihiro-kun. Let us in. **We love you**. Tell us what you need. You’re still here. _

_D O N ‘ T    D I S A P P E A R ._

The intense cerebral connection proves to be too much exposure for her especially when Watanuki burrows the thickest needle he could form and drills it further down until he finds the memory of Doumeki kissing her at the temple. She has buried it so deep that Watanuki knows instantly that she cherishes that moment. Crazed with jealousy, he is so horribly tempted to wipe it away, but Watanuki never gets the chance because Kohane’s eyes start to dim and her heart slows down.

“No, no, no, no, no!” He scoops her in his arms like she was ten years old again as the weight of his tears and guilt keep his eyes shut.

She is hardly breathing.

She is cold.

_This is real._

_You're awake._

_You're killing her._

“What have you done?” he sobs into her shoulder. “What have you done, you fool, you addict, you cannibal, you cruel and cowardly man?”

Watanuki recites a dangerous spell and a sudden burst of electricity surges into her body. She quivers immensely due to the shock, and then stops. One moment she’s motionless and the next she’s breathing a lungful of air as her arms wrap around him, fingernails digging into his back. She starts coughing violently, but she’s alive.

“What?” she croaked. “What happened to me?”

He loosens his embrace as his arms begin to feel numb.

“I killed you.”

Kohane pulls away from him and stares at his face. “No, I don’t believe that.”

Watanuki laughs and could even taste the relief in his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “but I think you need to remember that the most.”

“Kimihiro—”

“And forget this,” he cradles her head gently and drains the dark spots he had inflicted on her memories of Doumeki. He returns every piece of light in them.

Watanuki smiles at her as he cups her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Kohane-chan. But I also think you don’t have to forgive me. Neither of you should.”

Kohane opens her mouth but finds no words of protest or explanation. He can see the understanding dawning in her eyes. And it was awful.

It was staring at the one and only thing either of them has ever wanted and could have had, but never will.

He kisses her forehead and whispers, "You both deserve someone better.” He hugs her again very tightly even as he is ready to set her free. “You deserve one another."

Kohane still can’t speak but she tries to hold on to him anyway. It was futile. All it took was for Watanuki to swipe a hand and make her disappear. In one blink of an eye, she will simply find herself standing outside the wish shop, never to enter again.

Watanuki sinks back down to the floor, staring at the plain ceiling. His joints ache. His muscles are tense. He feels taut and loose all at once. It feels as if all the power in the world is crammed inside his body and it makes him claustrophobic like it never should have belonged there to begin with.

He never wanted this.

 _She_ never wanted this.

His throat burns. He chokes. He coughs. And then blood spurts out.

A sticky, black substance.

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

_What is happening to me?_

_This isn’t living._

_I never wanted this, never asked for it._

_So why can’t I die, Clow Reed?_

_Where have you gone?_

_What…._

_….what have you done?_

 

  

**xXx**

 

 

The writing just stops there. Watanuki stares at it for a long time then traces each of her word with trembling fingers. He could feel the tears forming but he blinks them away hurriedly. Folding the letter, he places it back inside the box and stares deeply into the rest of the contents, seeing nothing that stands out for a while until—

There.

It isn’t really the appearance of the aged paper, but rather the sensation that it evokes from him the moment Watanuki pulls it out.

He turns the paper and looks at it.

It is a sketch of a man he assumed (and knew in his heart) is Clow Reed.

He is young—

—and looks so much like Watanuki himself.

 

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watanuki faces the people who are still important to him, and who still believe he is capable of the very best in spite of his worst displays to prove them wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I surely hope that with this final chapter, all the pain from the previous ones had been worth it :3 I've covered this story with so much darkness and despair that there's little room for light. Even if there was, I have made it so dim that it's so hard to see with it. Now I'd like to believe that the final chapter of this tale shines the brightest. As grueling as the writing process had been, I also found it gratifying. I was very uncertain about my grim characterization of Watanuki and the readers' reception of it but once I made up my mind about something--especially with how I write fiction--I will always see it through, no matter how personally painful it gets on my end. And writing Watanuki and his relationships like this has been both hurtful and cathartic. I'm battling personal demons of my own these days, and as much as I keep that separate from my writing, I suppose my issues find a way to manifest anyway and clearly they had done so here. I'm not ashamed of it. I want to celebrate it. Much like Watanuki, I think sometimes you have to go down that dark path to come back whole again. 
> 
> **FREQUENCY** will have a sequel which would be the ninth installment of _Snapshots_. If you have been invested in this fic as much as I have, then I hope you will watch out for that and read it once I get around to publishing it--which wouldn't be so soon. There is still some tinkering that needs to be done with the outline of its plot but I'm more than eager and ready to explore them! That sequel will be entitled **Entwined Hearts and Other Glands** and will focus on the Doumeki-Kohane marriage and the mending of their relationship with Watanuki who has many miles to walk to deserve having both of them in his life again. There are a lot of things in canon that we can only speculate, and that would be my version of events on how the three of them made it work in spite of the weight of regrets they all share among each other.
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for everyone who supported this project of mine!~ <3
> 
>  **IMPORTANT** : Oh, I made an awesome PDF copy of the entire story with images and bigger fonts. **[[DOWNLOAD HERE]](http://www.mediafire.com/download/k4ex7xex6gi8xo2/fscxxx.rar)**

 

 

 

**124: The Truth About Forever**

* * *

 

 

 

 

Instant noodles—fast-food joints—junk food.

Shizuka Doumeki hasn’t eaten anything nutritious or gratifying since.

His heart simply refused to mend.

In just a span of four weeks, he lost two of the most important people in his life and he had been powerless to prevent it. That might have been a tragedy but the most awful thing actually came later; when he had to keep moving forward, when he had to keep going to work and interact with other people, when he had to cope with the reality that this is what his life had been reduced to. It’s the tedious routine of the ordinary that serves as a reminder that not long ago he was going to have it all. He had a best friend who understood him better than he did himself. He loved a man who was ready to give their relationship a fighting chance. And now one had forsaken him out of shame and regret, and the other took a knife and plunged it so deep that sometimes Doumeki could still physically feel the blade inside him.

For the first few days since Watanuki banished him from the shop, he had cried in a way he doesn’t remember ever doing. He felt like a sickly child of eight again, clutching on the kimono his grandfather had him wear. Doumeki took at least three days off from his work at the university during summer classes, and merely slept and occasionally drunk himself to stupor enough just so he could keep sleeping. And then, miraculously, he managed to get himself together and showed up for work again. It got easier but only because Doumeki was operating on autopilot, doing what is familiar just to be sane and inconspicuous. He had also stopped crying and stopped eating anything that resembled a decent meal. He drank more often. He even assigned his students to write very, _very_ lengthy essays just so he can distract himself by reading, grading and commenting on their outputs.

It worked. Life seemed to be normal for him again. And he hated it.

Today is the hardest. It was the first day of a new academic year. The cherry blossoms are in full bloom but all that Doumeki could think of as the petals fell was the unendurable agony of not being a part of Watanuki’s life, especially on this day.

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

Kohane Tsuyuri got up two hours early that day to prepare and cook meals for her grandmother and best friend. She was feeling strangely refreshed as if she had just woken up from a nightmare and now it felt as if she can conquer everything.

And then she remembered.

The love of her life had set her free. She should be sad. She should be angry. And yet somehow she was also thankful. A large boulder of a burden was lifted off her; something she now recognized had been slowly killing her. Much like with her abusive mother, she insisted on carrying it, on bearing its immense weight because she felt as if she must. No one should have to go punish themselves for that. It was Kimihiro who showed her she deserved something better.

Someone better.

Kohane hugged her grandmother goodbye before she walked to the university. The old woman hugged back, possibly knowing all along that she had faced a cavalry not long ago, and now Kohane is ready to live again.

As she walked the streets by herself, clutching the bento protectively on one hand, Kohane couldn’t help but smile almost wistfully. She had never felt so good. For the first time, she doesn’t feel afraid. No shame. No guilt. Around her, the cherry blossom trees seemed to radiant a heat she only noticed in this moment, and they filled her with mirthful contemplation of all the bright possibilities to come.

And then she remembered.

Today Kimihiro is alone on the day he should never have to be alone.

The same Kimihiro who held her mind in his hands and took out the horrific curse he inflicted on her, who kissed her—who killed her. But he revived her and showed her that he was still the same boy who saved her life years ago. Kohane only wished he didn’t have to send her away like that. She wished he let her stay. She wished—

Kohane paused and shook her head. Every wish has a price and she couldn’t afford to pay any of it anymore. This time she has to do better than cling to an empty wish fulfilment. This time she’s going to talk to him, to the other man who’s making her heart race since his morning—since before she even knew that she felt that way about him all along. Her grip on the bento renewed as she headed inside the gate of the university. This time, she won’t hold back.

 

 

**xXx**

Watanuki—the April Fool.

Kimihiro—a vow left unfulfilled.

The dream seer—the wish-granter—her apprentice—his own prisoner.

He didn’t sleep. He made sure of it. He had been so aware of everything right now that he may even count every stitch of the tatami mat underneath him if he concentrates hard enough. He turns his head to the side just in time to see Maro and Moro walking in, clutching the telephone with them. They hook the wires in the nearest outlet and then place the telephone within his reach. He smiles at them and they grin back, seeing it as an invitation for them to crawl into his arms and hold him. He closes his eyes and breathes in and out for a few minutes, listening to his own heart beat, running his fingers delicately into their hair.

The ceiling above him starts as a shapeless illusion that is slowly turning into something solid and concrete. He can reach out and touch it. He can still feel things with his fingers so it doesn’t have to be so bad anymore. The warm air is stale inside the room but he can also hear the birds and several other living things outside the shop, and they’re music to his ears. Watanuki finally rises, pulling the girls along with him when he does. He stretches his arms up carefully, tries to get rid of the exhaustion and the inactivity on his muscles. He rolls his head slowly and then cracks his knuckles. Maro and Moro stand up without preamble to fetch him new clothing from her closet but before they can pull out any of her familiar material, he tells them that he wants to put on the pink Chinese garment instead.

They help him change. He stands in front of a mirror while he watches them. When everything is in place, he puts on the antique spectacles and observes his reflection.

Maro and Moro greet him, circling around him in a dance with their hands clasping one another. “Happy birthday, master~”

“Master looks elegant~”

“Master is beautiful~”

“Today is special for master~”

“Happy birthday~”

He smiles and thanks them and then walks back to the mat to pick up the phone. Kneeling down, he dials her number which he knows by heart for years. He listens to it ring, the anticipation almost making him nervous.

She picks up by the fourth ring. Hearing her voice on the other line is a saving grace.

“Good morning, Kimihiro,” she says, “Happy birthday.”

“Thank you, Himawari,” he responds as he shyly curls his finger on the phone’s line as he speaks. “I know this may seem unusual but I would like to try something new this year, if that’s okay with you.”

“Oh?” she sounds curious and interested already.

Watanuki takes a deep breath, holding it for a few seconds before he releases, and then inquires, “Would you like to meet me in a dream?”

 

 

**xXx**

Doumeki was just leaving for his next class when Tsuyuri approached him. Seeing her again took him by surprise that he almost thought she was just an illusion. But she was real—she is beautiful—and the softness in her expression only compelled him to meet her halfway as she walked toward him. They stopped before each other in an acceptable short distance, and she started smiling. He shuffled his clipboard and book from one arm to the other and felt himself smiling a little, the tension slowly falling away as soon as they both blurted out together—

“How are you feeling?”

They paused, caught surprised by that, and then paused for a while to wait for one another to speak again. It was Tsuyuri who did first.

“I saw him two nights ago,” she began. Doumeki felt like shrinking in spite of himself but she touched his elbow gently to get him to keep listening. “He was a…he was Kimihiro-kun, but definitely less of the man we remember and…care about.”

“Did he hurt you again?” he couldn’t help but ask.

Tsuyuri shook her head and he breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Not like before,” she expounded. “But it did hurt to see him and talk to him while he’s in that state. He’s so scared and alone in there. In the shop. In his head. I wanted to—I mean, I tried to…” she gulped and for a moment it looked like she couldn’t go on. Doumeki took that as a cue and placed his hand on her arm so they can walk to a more secluded corner of a corridor. Some students passed by but paid them no heed. Tsuyuri tried to gather herself and went on.

“He told me that he had done terrible things while he was left all alone,” she swept her hand on top of his where it was still on her arm. He allowed it as he listened to her. “And some of them he’s not even sure he regrets. But I think he has seen the error of his ways but also realized that it might be too late. And that is why he has banished me from the shop. I can’t enter at all.”

“So,” Doumeki closed his eyes once then opened them again, “same as me.”

Tsuyuri opened her mouth to say something, perhaps to console him, but instead she just took his hand from her arm and squeezed it with both of hers. Doumeki suddenly felt weak in the knees. She had done this gesture for what seemed like a thousand times now but somehow doing this now felt more meaningful than before.

“You shouldn’t have confronted him while you’re angry,” she finally responded, her eyes looking at their hands clasped together. “You might have both said something you could never take back. And now…” she trailed off.

“He hurt you,” he simply answered because it was all that mattered to him now; the fact that Watanuki placed him and Tsuyuri in a position where it felt as if Doumeki had to choose one over the other. He just couldn’t do it.

She looked up at him. “And he hurt you too, didn’t he?”

Doumeki had to let her go so he could shuffle his things to his other arm. He glanced at the wall clock behind her and sighed. “Listen, both of us still have classes to go to right now so we should just talk about this later.”

“I finish earlier than you,” she said. “I’ll go to the temple and wait for you there.”

“Tsuyuri?” he called out to her as she turned around to start walking to the other direction. She met his gaze. He said, “I’m glad we’re speaking again.”

She smiled.

“And,” he added, “I’ve missed you.”

It hurt to say it but he was glad he did say it because now Tsuyuri looked as if she wanted to run to where he stood and maybe wrap her arms around him. And he would have held her back without a doubt. In the end, he was glad she didn’t do that because he may never let her go.

“Shizuka—I mean, Doumeki-san,” she quickly corrected herself when a few students walked by again. She lowered her gaze as she replied. “I made you some lunch this morning but I left it at class. I could bring it over at the faculty room if you want.”

He nodded and let himself smile. “Thank you. I appreciate it. And Tsuyuri,” he paused for a short while and added, speaking softly that he’s not sure he can be heard, “I’m sorry for not trying harder. I think I must have…failed you a little."

But Tsuyuri heard him anyway and replied, “Trust me, I don’t think you ever could.” She waved at him before she began to walk off. “Let’s talk later.”

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

Himawari listened to his instructions the entire time, keeping the phone line open between them. Watanuki tells her to go to her bed and lay there, to close her eyes as she hears only his voice, focusing on his words until everything in the background fades away. For his part, Watanuki is now resting on the sofa inside the lounge, eyes drooping as he tells Himawari to think about any specific place she would like for them to meet. He tells her to focus on the image and make it as vivid as possible. A few minutes after, he can hear Himawari breathing heavily on the other line. She has fallen asleep. Closing his eyes, Watanuki follows her in her dreamscape.

The first thing he sees is a pattern of periwinkle blue on white and he realizes he is staring at a blanket laid on a field of grass. He looks up and sees Himawari smiling at him. He blinks at her and then turns his head around to figure out where they are and he sees that they are exactly where they used to spend a lot of time together; at a peaceful corner near the exit of the school where there is a lush greenery that Watanuki remembers picking by himself when he first invited her to lunch, and it has been their spot ever since. He chuckles at this and grins at Himawari who is also wearing her familiar pigtails and uniform.

“You could have chosen anywhere, you know,” Watanuki remarks, “if your imagination is creative enough, we could even travel to some wild, exotic country.”

Himawari laughed. “Oh, I haven’t even ventured far from Japan to picture another country that well. Besides,” she looks down her hands as she speaks, “who cares about tourist attractions from another country when I already have my most favorite place in the world? Here with you and Doumeki-kun during lunch breaks.”

He can’t help but blush from that simple revelation, but the mention of Doumeki’s name makes him hurt again. Watanuki shakes the thought of that and focuses back on Himawari fully. She lifts her eyes and smiles again at him. There is a much older and sadder quality in that smile. Watanuki wonders if she had always smiled like that and if she did, then why has it taken him so long to notice it?

“This is wonderful,” Watanuki murmurs. “I barely even remember this place, this point in time,” he closes his eyes, “I barely remember being this happy in a while.”

“What’s wrong, Kimihiro?” she asks as a frown settles on her lips. “You shouldn’t be sad on your birthday. And besides, this is the first time I get to see you again. I enjoyed our long talks over the phone but…” she chuckles once and then looks away. “This is a little cruel of you, now that I think about it.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighs and touches one of her pigtails absentmindedly. “For years I have resigned myself to the reality that I will never see you again, Kimihiro. And now we’re both here. Inside a dream, I know, but it’s the closest physical interaction we had in forever,” she looks at him at last, her eyes a shade brighter than he remembers, “something happened to you, hasn’t it? Something bad? I prayed to anyone who would listen—that it wouldn’t be as difficult, this life you chose when you decided you wanted to wait for Yuuko-san. I really wished…” she stops herself.

Watanuki waits. Himawari chuckles again as she looks down on her lap, but there is no mirth in it. She goes on. “Since I met you and Yuuko-san, I learned not to make light of wishes. There are many things I want to come true and I used to think that wishing hard enough might do the trick. But at the same time it occurred to me that maybe there’s a reason why we can’t have some of those things—” she glances at him, “and why we’re often better off not wishing for the things whose depth or consequence we can hardly understand.”

“You’re right,” he reaches out to lightly rest his palm on top of her hand.

“If I dream of you again like this, does that mean you can come?” she sounds too hopeful that it makes it harder to answer her honestly.

“It doesn’t work that way,” he says, “I don’t think I could sustain this astral connection again next year.” His powers are growing immense but after the spell he cast to revive Kohane—he just couldn’t risk putting that much strain on himself. He recovers a few hours from the agonizing pain of both his mind and body, but it’s only because Mokona has to rush in and heal him as best as he could manage, and now the poor creature is unconscious. He hasn’t woken up yet. Watanuki should probably go back and make sure Mokona is almost done recuperating.

Himawari must have read the anxiety in his features because she doesn’t push on with the idea. Instead, she takes his hand and presses it to her cheek. Watanuki leans closer and holds his breath.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispers.

“Not like I’ve missed you,” he replies, feeling nervous and self-conscious. He stays still, however. “I never got to say a proper goodbye to you. I’ve always regretted that. I’m so sorry, Himawari. I really…did love you.”

She lets his hand go and grins, “I should apologize. I may have been so insensitive all those times whenever you would eagerly express how infatuated you are with me.”

“No, that’s fine,” Watanuki blushes again and scratches the back of his head. “I was always making a fool of myself back then. I couldn’t imagine any girl, let alone you, ever returning my feelings.”

“But that’s only because it was obvious that you’re going to end up with Doumeki—” her eyes widens as she stops herself too late.

Watanuki only sighs, “Did everyone really think that back then? You did keep saying we got along so well. Even Yuuko-san keeps insisting I change my ways around Doumeki and treat him differently. Am I really the only one who didn’t…?” he closes his eyes and couldn’t open them anymore.

“Kimihiro?” he feels Himawari touching his cheek, her thumb moving across the skin. “Did something—where is Doumeki?”

“I don’t know,” he whispers. “I…ended things with him. I wasn’t myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“No, forget that,” he opens his eyes at last and looks directly into hers. “I was perfectly in control of myself. I was aware of what I was doing. I just didn’t care. I hurt him, Himawari…” he takes her both hands now and squeezes. “I hurt Kohane too. I did these things—terrible, cruel and I could never them take back. I thought I was fine with it. I thought it would be something I’ll get used to after awhile. But I don’t want that!” he starts to tear up. “I don’t want to be a monster,” he murmurs.

“Oh god, Kimihiro, that’s just not true,” Himawari hugs him tightly now. “You’re a good person. You’ve helped people, a lot of them. You’re so sweet and compassionate and you always believed that there’s something worth saving in someone. You thought I was worth saving before and I owe you everything for that.”

She pulls back and cups his face with her hands. “Didn’t you know? I never would have allowed myself to fall in love and get married if it wasn’t for the faith you placed upon me. You said you were lucky to meet me, and in that moment you made me feel wanted and needed. You made me feel… _human,_ ” she shakes her head, fighting the tears, “From then on, I didn’t feel like I should punish myself for what I was, that…just because I was born this way—” she starts to sob.

Watanuki holds her for as long as she needs. Eventually, her sobs subside and she is able to face him again.

“Promise me something, please,” she says. “Promise me you’ll make things right.”

Watanuki doesn’t want to promise it. He simply can’t offer her that guarantee but Himawari is adamant.

“Be the boy I fell in love with, Kimihiro,” she says more forcefully and leans in closer before Watanuki could protest. Their kiss is chaste but it burns nonetheless.

Himawari pulls back and repeats with a tight smile, “Be that hero again.”

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

Doumeki’s hands are clammy for some reason as he approached the entrance of his family’s temple. His steps are purposeful at first but they grew unsure as soon as he saw the outline of Tsuyuri’s back. She was once again facing the trees. Caught by a strange reverie all of a sudden, he slowed down once he got close enough to her. He recalled the very first time he saw her years ago by glimpsing her image from the eyesight he shared with Watanuki. He at first thought she was an apparition but talking to Watanuki afterwards confirmed that the reason he also saw her was not because she was paranormal but because Watanuki felt intense emotions toward her without even knowing her yet. He wondered if Watanuki’s feelings were the same kind he had when he saw him cradling that dead cat under the rain. Perhaps not. What he felt for Watanuki then was compassion. What Watanuki felt for Tsuyuri was instant kinship. She must have felt it too. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have come back to see Watanuki again for herself.

And what about Doumeki? How did he feel about Tsuyuri?

As if on cue, the young girl in question turned and saw him just standing there. He felt out of place but then she urged him to come close with a smile and he finally sat down next to her. They were perfectly comfortable with the silence for a few minutes, just watching the trees and enjoying the companionship each other provided. And then Tsuyuri finally decided to speak up first.

“If you’re okay with it, I’d like to talk about what happened when you and Kimihiro-kun fought because of me that day.” Her voice was faint which was understandable, given the delicacy of her request. Doumeki only hummed.

But he did answer her, “It wasn’t really a conversation let alone an argument between equals. He can read minds, you know. If you think hard enough in his presence, he can hear them. I suppose…because I was livid, I was doing that and he heard me thinking…things I regret now. But back then, I was too angry to care. He heard me thinking these bad things and he reacted very poorly.” In spite of himself, Doumeki winced and shifted in his seat. “I got the same treatment you spoke of; that needle in the mind. It’s excruciating. I’m sorry you had to go through it.”

Doumeki turned his body to face her and looked at her directly in the eye. “He hurt you. It never would have crossed my mind that he could be capable of that, not in a million years. He knew the environment you grew up in, and the kind of relationship you had with the woman who raised you,” he paused, wondering why he can’t even address Tsuyuri’s mother properly. He ignored it and went on, “and all I could think about in the heat of that moment is that he’s…treating you the same way she did. It was just…” he reached for her and then hesitated. He withdrew his hand and looked away, “…it was just not something that the Watanuki I knew would be capable of. He proved me wrong when he acted as if he was justified for doing that. And because of you—of the pain you suffered because of him—I think I hated Watanuki a little.”

“Shizuka, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be,” Doumeki interjected, gazing at her again, weighing his next words. “You and I have been…friends in ways that I think barely needs definition or proof. We became friends because nobody else knew what we are going through other than each other.” He paused again and let out a sigh before he asked her, “I’m not wrong to say that you feel just as intensely as I do about him, don’t you?”

Tsuyuri nodded once. “He is—very precious to me. I don’t think I could ever be free of him completely. And yet—” she sighed too and closed her eyes. When her voice shook as she continued, Doumeki knew she’s about to cry.

“He set me free,” she said, “he apologized and told me at the same time that he could never deserve my forgiveness. Or yours. And then he denied me entrance to the shop. This morning I woke up as if I wasn’t tied down and drowning in a sea somewhere anymore. But now that we’re talking about this again, I realize it still hurts to know that I had to lose him—no, that’s not it.”

She opened her eyes and gulped down. Tsuyuri spoke more decisively now, “It hurts more to know that _he_ had to lose _me_ that way.”

Doumeki understood what she meant by that. He wished he didn’t but he did.

“It’s depressing, isn’t it?” she gazed at him, eyes brimming with some tears. “After all this time, it’s his welfare we’re more concerned about than ours. I think we’re much more prepared to lose him than we would care to admit. He’s always been so… _unobtainable_ at times, you know? But _if he loses us_ —I think that’s the very thing that we will fight for so it will never happen.”

Doumeki understood that too. His throat suddenly feels hot and tight.

“There is a way,” he offered. “I’ve been doing some extensive research about spells and in one of the old chronicles of my grandfather’s I came across this…curse.”

Tsuyuri’s eyes widened. “You shouldn’t dabble with curses. Those are tricky, volatile things, Shizuka-kun. They may not only taint you but also generations from your lineage. And you’re a Doumeki. That is a legacy you should preserve.”

“I know,” Doumeki conceded. “This curse I speak of has a very dangerous price. Like an idiot though, I was even considering that I would be ready to pay it—all for him. I was thinking, ‘ _What’s one more piece of me_?’ I’ve already given Watanuki everything else. But then after what happened with you and him, I’m not even sure if anything is worth the trouble. Even him,” he felt like crying again when he admitted that, but he just covered his face with a hand, more frustrated than anything.

They said nothing for a while. Somehow their hands found their way around each other’s since the conversation deepened. It felt so natural that they hardly noticed.

“You don’t fool me,” she finally spoke up, smiling the saddest smile he has ever seen in her. “He is worth the trouble and we both know it—”

“Yes!” Doumeki agreed more passionately than he intended as he faced her again. “It’s not fair, is it? There is this part of me that resents how much—how much I still want him, how much I still want to be with him. All I ever wanted…all I—” he closed his eyes and then felt Tsuyuri touching his cheek, her thumb moving across the skin.

“I know,” she simply remarked.

“I just want to love him, Kohane,” he finished in spite of the constriction in his chest. “But he has fought me every step of the way and I am so…tired.”

She whispered again, shakily. “I know…”

They were so close like this that nothing could ever possibly drive them apart. They wouldn’t have allowed it. So Tsuyuri— _Kohane_ —framed his face with both hands now, and Doumeki surged forward, as if being toppled over down a cliff, and claimed her lips with his own. It was a searing kiss that endeavoured to express all the other complicated feelings tying them together, but neither could ever aspire to put in words because they aren’t meant to be spoken at all, only felt. And that’s all there was left for them to do in that moment, to seek solace in the awful truth that they have been made inseparable more by the circumstances they’ve been caught up in than any real, conscious choice. But Doumeki wanted to believe otherwise, and Kohane was more than willing to pretend that whatever this was is enough.

She pulled away first but didn’t let him go completely. Gazing into him deeply, she makes him promise, “Whatever you want to do for his sake, let’s always do it together. Separated, neither of us will make it—but united?”

Kohane smiled now as she brushed her fingers through his hair with trembling fingers, “—we not only get to save him, but also each other. I promise you this, Shizuka. I vow to be your pillar and guide from this day forward. I vow to be your constant companion and partner in every trial that comes.”

Doumeki took her hand and kissed it.

“I vow to be there when you need it and even when you need it least,” he murmured, cupping her face in his hands now and seeing nothing else. “I vow never to lie to you or exclude you, to treat you best and to cherish and care for you…”

“Shizuka…” Kohane blinked the tears away and kissed him again. It was warm and hopeful and he returned it with the same fervor, one hand cradling her by the back of her head while the other was pressed on her chest as a claim on her heart.

At least they could have each other.

It _has_ to be—it _should_ be—it _must_ be enough.

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

_Was I ever a hero?_

This question begins to fraught Watanuki for quite some time as soon as he recovers from the dreamscape he shared with Himawari that day.  He sits there in his tatami mat alone in contemplation for a while when his chest suddenly twinges, making him cough repeatedly again. Perturbed, he covers his mouth with a hand and dreads for the next thing to come as he looks into his palm.

Nothing—there is none of the black tar substance from nights ago.

Watanuki wishes he could be relieved but knows that there is no guarantee that he has been fully cured by whatever affliction he brought upon himself. He thinks of Mokona and wills himself to stand and walk so he can go to the lounge where he is sleeping inside a glass container. Upon reaching it, Watanuki wobbles all of a sudden and is thankfully able to hold onto the sofa’s edge just in time. He finds purchase in its solidity and carefully sits down. He feels curiously out of breath.

Mokona lays there in repose and the sight of it makes Watanuki ache. He runs his hand on his fur and prays he will wake up soon. He has taken for granted so many things and people in his life already and Mokona is one of them, and the last one aside from Maro and Moro who still gives a damn about what happens to him. Watanuki doesn’t want to lose such a reliable and patient friend. Not right now when he feels more abandoned than ever before because of his selfish choices. Never again when it feels like every hour spent imprisoned in her wish shop feels like a lifetime has already passed him by.

How old is he supposed to be now, anyway? Twenty…something—he can’t really remember. He can never be sure, he supposes. Has it really been a long time since he was seventeen and met Yuuko Ichihara for the first time? Watanuki looks down at his pink Chinese garment and thinks rather awkwardly that it is too stylish for his taste but the color and the texture of the material are warm and smooth against his clammy skin. He wounds his arms around himself and debates whether he should put on back his old high school uniform instead. It still fits after all, and looking at himself in the mirror with it right at this lonely moment could possibly help him imagine as if several years have not passed at all—and that maybe Yuuko is not dead, and this has all been nothing but a cursed dream. Maybe he is going to wake up soon on her bed again. She’ll be smiling at him in that eerie yet endearing way of hers. And maybe Doumeki and Himawari are at school today, waiting for the lunch he prepared, and Kohane will still be a child who looks up to him.

Suddenly everything feels wrong. It feels wrong to wear Yuuko’s kimonos and live in her shop—to ever hope of replacing her; to be held by Maro and Moro at nights and expect for them to serve him all the time. It feels wrong to drink and talk to Mokona again as if they are old friends. It’s wrong to be loved by Doumeki after the shit he has pulled and put the other man through. It’s wrong to think Himawari was ever okay with the fact that he just left her behind. And when Kohane has chosen him as her family, it is deathly wrong for her own chosen brother to try and rape her before.

Watanuki rests a hand to cover his eyes and he struggles to breathe, fighting hard against the tears that are threatening to come again. _What have I done, what have I done, what have I done…_

He sinks to his knees now and kneels before the glass container where Mokona is enclosed, and that is when he begins to shiver because of the change in temperature. He looks up from his preoccupation so he can focus on the new presence entering his shop. Watanuki rises slowly, not wanting to strain his body further from exertion. He calls for the girls to help him walk out. They hold him by his hands and on either side of his waist, fuzzing over him with words of rhyming affections. He sets his foot in the yard and instantly sees the Ame Warashi already waiting by the hydrangeas. He feels nervous as he swallows a lump in his throat. With her umbrella tucked under one of her arms, she doesn’t look at Watanuki at first and instead inspects the flowers by each stem. She takes her time and Watanuki only intervenes by the tenth flower or so. He simply greets her as welcomingly as he could muster, and then expresses that he is honored to be in her presence once more.

Ame Warashi doesn’t respond. She glances at him coolly and looks him up and down for some time before she turns away and looks up at the sky. Watanuki frowns but says nothing for a few minutes. Finally, when the silence continues to stretch on, lacking any purpose, he is forced to ask, “What do you seek of me, Ame Warashi-san?” He takes a step closer but said sprite sharply turns her head to glare at him.

“How about we talk about your little theatrics concerning the Jorougumo?” her voice is oddly soft in spite of the underlying vehemence. “That must have been so enjoyable for you, huh, oh-powerful seer and wish-granter. Never mind the extent of disrespect which you had just sown and the disaster you’re about to reap.”

Watanuki lets go of Maro and Moro’s hands and approaches the Ame Warashi by himself. He tries not to show the discomfort of doing so and she doesn’t seem to notice or even care if she ever did. She just stands there with that expression of growing contempt on her face. When they are only three yards apart, he replies, “I regret what I did. I truly do. I have no excuses. I would like to say I merely acted on impulse but that would be a lie.” He pauses and gathers his courage as he admits, “I planned on entrapping the Jorougumo for a while, I suppose. I knew it was only a matter of finding the right bait. And once I did, I seduced her into my shop and committed the heinous act you speak of. I really am sorry about it.”

“Hmm,” Ame Warashi just narrows her eyes at him and answers, “You certainly made an example out of her. Isn’t that what you wanted? To shame her and parade her as your plaything among other sprites and otherworldly creatures? To impose and prove to all of us that you are the Great and Terrible Kimihiro Watanuki, and we must quiver in fear and cower before you and never ever dare to displease you?”

He opens his mouth but finds no words would come. He feels his cheeks burn and his throat constrict. Watanuki looks down on the ground and maintains his silence.

But Ame Warashi isn’t done. “Shall I bow? Shall I curtsey? Which would the Great and Terrible prefer? How could this humble creature be at his service?”

Watanuki winces and looks at her, blinking rapidly. Her voice is still soft and even monotonous the entire time. Only her eyes give away her true feeling on the matter. She doesn’t look angry at all. She looks—

“You’re disappointed in me,” Watanuki cast his eyes down the ground again.

“Disappointed? HA! That would imply I had expectations in the first place.”

“And you did,” he answers carefully, “and I let you down.”

Ame Warashi snorts and shakes her head. “You think it surprises me that you would sink so low? I was counting on it. You’re an anomaly in time and space after all. You were born as a replacement for someone else’s existence. By all accounts, you’re not supposed to be here. And that’s what you wanted to do for a long time, isn’t it? Disappear? And yet here you are, a ghost of your own making, and you’ve haunted this place and the people you love long enough, don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry!” Watanuki says more forcefully now. He clenched his fists and bows down to his waist. “I really, really am so sorry!”

“Why do you bother apologizing to me?” She looks repulsed, crossing her arms together now. “I’m not the one who is missing an eye.”

“Please…” Watanuki looks up and feels his eyes tear up. “I don’t—I can’t be a monster. I never wanted any of this.”

“Why, of course not,” Ame Warashi takes a few steps forward but didn’t try to touch him for either consolation or injury. “But your actions have been foul, child.”

“I know,” Watanuki wraps his arms around himself, eyes leaking with fresh tears. “I want to—change. I need to make amends. I will start with the Jorougumo—”

“Why? She can never harm you, not after binding her to a contract that she is obligated to fulfill,” Ame Warashi interjects, “See? You have won. You neutered her. She’s afraid of what you could still do to her so she will stay away. Everyone has been doing that too. Heck, even the father and son of the oden shop were advised to stay out of your sight and out of your reach lest you feel being cruel again and lash out, and they may unfortunately be on the receiving end of that.”

“Never!” Watanuki protests but his voice sounds too weak to make a strong argument of it. “I will never harm those two, not after what they’ve done for me.”

“So only those who wronged you will experience your wrath? Good to know you still draw boundaries,” Ame Warashi inspects her nails with disinterest.

Watanuki doesn’t understand why she’s being so cold and horrible. He knows he deserves her bitterness but he wants to move her with his decision to turn things around. He wants her to believe it because it is true. Aren’t his tears and hurt words proof enough that he sincerely wants to repair things? What else would it take?

Making up his mind then, he steps closer, still every aware of the strain that each movement is putting on his whole body, but he ignores the inconvenience for a while. He stops as soon as he goes pass her and reaches the hydrangeas located behind. This finally gets her attention.

Watanuki faces her and doesn’t wait for her to say anything. He interrupts, “Then may I suggest something? Perhaps it would be best for you to take the hydrangeas somewhere else then—away from me—if I’m such a toxic influence. I wouldn’t want to poison them unintentionally, and neither should you.”

“Are _you_ threatening _me_?” Now she’s definitely angry. He shakes his head quickly but is relieved about her rage finally showing, as awful as it sounds. But then she takes the umbrella tucked under her arm and walks up to him with a confident stride. She hits him squarely on the shoulder, but it was still done lightly compared to what she must have originally intended. Watanuki winces from the impact nevertheless.

“What was that for?” he asks even though he already knows the answer.

“Don’t insult me, you falsely named, arrogant child! I knew Yuuko much more intimately than you could imagine when she first started with this shop, and I have seen her do worse things than you have during her moments of weakness, and I chose to stand by her then because I knew—and I believed—and I had faith she can be the very best there is!”

That shocks him. He tries to apologize again. “I was only trying to—”

“You want to change?” she is almost shouting now. “You want to make amends?”

He chokes and clenches his fists harder. “Y-Yes—!”

“Then start by lying to yourself no longer!” Her eyes had fire he has never seen before. “Listen, _Watanuki_. You vowed to take care of the hydrangeas, didn’t you? And now you’re just backing away from that promise? Is that all it takes? One momentary lapse and error in judgment and you run off all weepy and scared? Why? Because you think you’re unworthy? Merciful gods, is it always going to be the same tune with you as you sit here in your cage? That, once again, poor, orphaned Watanuki doesn’t value himself enough to deserve people who love him and care about him? You think you’re the _only_ creation in existence—the _only_ human—who has ever felt like he or she is _dirty_ and _unforgivable_? NO, YOU HAPLESS CHILD!”

She hits him again. “You are so frustrating!”

Watanuki doesn’t avoid the blows that come from her.

“You’re so dense for someone who has experienced enough grief to know better!” she hits him again on the other shoulder this time. “For someone who had so much potential to be better!” she hits him again, “who should have been better!” another blow, “who wasted so much time pining over something he can never have back and will never return!” she hits him some more, “Foolish! Crazy! Stupid! Selfish!”

But each blow doesn’t hurt as much as he would expect—or would have wanted. After a while Watanuki manages to catch the umbrella the next time it lands and he holds it tightly in his grasp as he says again, pleading and hoping it’s more than enough for her this time. “I’m sorry. I’m _so_ , _so_ , sorry, Ame Warashi-san. And thank you!” he smiles at her through the tears. “I didn’t know you cared so much. Just… _thank you_!” He pauses and swallows another lump in his throat and asks, “but what do I do now? What _could_ I do? I need… _help_ ….please…will _you_ help me?”

She seems to consider that for a moment. After what seems like eternity, she lowers the umbrella and he also lets it go. Surprising him next, she takes a step closer and puts a hand over his cheek, looking into his eyes so deeply and seeing him—all of _it_ —and he couldn’t hide at all. There is a tinge of silver in the shade of her eyes and he is mesmerized by it instantly.

“Those hydrangeas are from Shizuka Doumeki, you already know that,” she tells him, “he values you and has done all that he could to show it. The flowers are mere extensions of the strength of his feelings for you. Now when you vowed to take care of them, you were also making a promise to uphold his feelings to a certain degree of respect and reciprocation,” she sighs and continues. “See, once he has offered himself, that also included giving up a little of his freedom. And you know this wasn’t the first time he has done it. That’s how much you mean to him, Watanuki,” she puts another hand to cup his other cheek. “It should matter. And it does, doesn’t it?”

After another moment passes, she slowly lowers both hands from his face, but still maintains eye contact. “So you can start by sticking around, you know—to actively _choose_ to become a part of Shizuka’s life even if neither of you together can have the kind of future normal lovers your age dream of. I am very sorry for that. I truly am,” she shakes her head in sympathy.

“But my child,” she adds, “you also can’t keep backing away from a choice that has already been made the moment you accepted his feelings, and then hurt him unnecessarily just because it gets hard and complicated on your end alone. That’s not how it works, Watanuki. You don’t get to be the martyr anymore. You don’t get to make excuses. You don’t get to delude yourself into reasoning out that you’re merely trying to protect him when what you’re only doing is to protect yourself from any chance of being truly happy and truly loved.”

She laughs grimly at that. “And it’s so stupid and ultimately pointless! Trust me when I say that one should never get comfortable with heartbreak.”

Watanuki just nods. He doesn’t have anything to say. He isn’t sure what else he could say. She is right. They have all been right. He does speak up later on as they stand there together, just looking at each other, more familiar and intimate than they ever thought.

He asks her truthfully, “But what is so worth loving about me anyway?”

Ame Warashi smiles and then shrugs her shoulders. “You’re the only one who can figure it out. You have all the time in the world now, Watanuki.”

“A little too much of it,” he answers back with a tight smile.

She sighs and reaches out for one of the hydrangeas behind him to rub her fingers on the petals. “No more excuses, Watanuki. No more delays. No more stagnation.”

“I understand,” he replies. “Thank you for visiting me and for all the advice. I will do better. I know I have to. And I need to start with Doumeki and Kohane-chan, I know. But I’m so embarrassed and terrified of what they’re going to say.”

“That’s reasonable,” Ame Warashi says, “but it has to be done. You know it.”

Watanuki nods again and takes her hands and kisses them before she bids farewell.

 _She is right. They have all been right_ , Watanuki repeats to himself _. I’ve been blind, in spite of being gifted with the sight. Why, oh why, have I refused to see the things that are right in front of me clearly? What has taken me so long?_

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

The sky above them as Kohane and Doumeki walked together was a pale color of blue streaked with clumsy orange and pink. It was rather humid that afternoon, but they both felt cold for some reason, and the street they’re walking in seemed to go on for a stretch of miles before they could even turn to a corner. It led exactly to the wish shop—or at least to the vacant lot located between two skyscrapers.

They stood there together now and just stared into the empty space. Neither of them could speak for a while but they took comfort in the knowledge at least that they don’t have to face him alone. As for the dream seer in question himself, Watanuki had been standing there the entire time, watching them from across the barrier. He was smiling quite painfully because he was so grateful to see them again, but was also worried of what this meant. And so he could not bring himself to remove the blocking enchantment at all because he was still so afraid to hear what they have to say, to allow them to see him at his most vulnerable, and to decide for themselves that he has become unworthy of their affections. Cowardly, Watanuki stayed in the same spot as Kohane and Doumeki briefly exchanged words to themselves which they did in soft voices as they stood too close together like…

…he wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case. Watanuki breathed out and suddenly wished he was smoking right now, but he promised Mokona not to indulge on his opiates anymore. But while he stood there unseen by Kohane and Doumeki as they continue to whisper between themselves, occasionally touching each other in the arm, Watanuki felt like trying to remove the enchantment anyway even though he may not be strong enough for that. Opening a channel between his mind and theirs can be done but that would put so much stress on himself too. His veins also feel thick with the tar-like substance from before. He could feel it; he doesn’t have to start choking it out to be sure. His powers are tainted with this darkness, and if he tried to use magic again, there may be more fatal consequences. He would not risk it, not if it meant harming the two. Besides, all that matters is that they’re here now.

Eventually, it was Kohane who spoke up first.

“I know you could be listening,” she said as she interlaced her fingers together, “I hope you are. I just want you to know that I miss you….and that I hope someday you’d be ready to let us in again so we can…the three of us—” she paused. And then: “Things need to change. Not just on your end but on ours as well. I respect your decision, Kimihiro-kun, to discontinue our friendship, but until you are ready—I will wait for you. I don’t care how long it will take,” she stepped closer and stopped just an inch away from the barrier and right in front of him at that. Watanuki blinked at her, suddenly nervous in spite the fact that she can’t see him.

But her spiritual intuition is still intact, and when her eyes glazed over, he knew that she must have felt him standing there.

She presently confirmed this with a small smile. “So you’ve come to meet us after all. Thank you. That already means a lot to the both of us,” she glanced back at Doumeki who looked surprised himself and instinctively tried peering into the barrier.

“Goodbye for now, Kimihiro-kun,” she muttered softly. “I’m sorry this is so difficult for you but I hope you can understand now that it’s also difficult for us. One day,” she closed her eyes and then opened them again, looking more resolute than ever, “one day it will get better. The weight will lessen, and only when you let us carry that with you. We could never imagine our lives with you, Kimihiro-kun. And we won’t.”

She stepped back and then glanced at Doumeki. He just nodded. Kohane then began to walk off to a distance so she can give him some privacy with Watanuki.

It suddenly became hard to breathe. Watanuki couldn’t move at all as Doumeki approached. His steps were languid as if all his hesitation, pain and regret were contained in his feet. Watanuki bravely met the other man’s eyes even if he’s invisible to him right now. It didn’t make it any less intense for him and he could tell that Doumeki must be feeling the same. For a dangerous moment, Watanuki wanted to destroy the barrier—such a flimsy thing preventing him from ever touching the one person in his life he knew he could have had true happiness with—but resisted. He didn’t know how he managed that but he did. The twinge on his chest was so immense, and the seemingly hard rock caught stuck in his throat has made it very impossible for Watanuki to ever hope that he won’t start crying.

He noticed how Doumeki’s jaw tightened as he tentatively lifted a hand and Watanuki found himself reaching for him out of instinct. Doumeki then moved his hand across the air as if he is trying everything to feel the barricade in his palm. Watanuki smiled at this and chased the trail his fingers left using his own. Finally, Doumeki rested his hand on one side and—with nothing else left to do—Watanuki imitated the gesture and pressed his own fingers against Doumeki’s.

They stayed like that for a while, and they could have stayed like that for an eternity and Watanuki never would have cared as long as Doumeki _looked_ at him _like that_. Has he ever looked at Watanuki like that the entire time? It was filled with so much of _everything_ and Doumeki was just so…so _fucking_ beautiful—and so honest and loving and—so, so beautiful and _his_. Watanuki wished—wished with everything he’s got, like never before—that he could turn back time and let Yuuko Ichihara go. He should have moved on. He should have only grieved her because the privilege of the living is to bury their dead. He never should have disrespected her memory like he had for the longest time simply by refusing to _live_. Wasn’t that her greatest wish?

In the end though, Doumeki couldn’t reach into the barrier or say anything; to convey how he felt and perhaps how he didn’t feel. Words were simply never going to be enough for the two of them at this point, so Doumeki just walked away in tears. It was the second time Watanuki has seen the other man cry and once again because of him, so he was devastated and tried to scream after him, even though Doumeki will never be able hear it. Watanuki was somewhat thankful that he didn’t. The seer just stood there with both hands pressed against the barricade, wailing out his name.

Doumeki might as well have sprouted wings and flew away from him.

That strange comparison inexplicably knocked Watanuki down to his knees now as he still kept his hands on the barrier. He doesn’t know why that was, but it was as if he recognized this feeling of abandonment and utter heartbreak from somewhere else before—perhaps, in another world.

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

He wasn’t even sure when he slept or how he was able to, but when Watanuki opened his eyes Mokona was smiling down at him.

He was the wrong color though, Watanuki thought.

There was a touch of hand on his forehead which for some reason hardly startled Watanuki, and then it moved gently down his cheek. He could barely keep his eyes open especially when the fingers caressed him to a calmness he hasn’t felt in ages. He turned his head to the side to try to look at where the hand is coming from. It was getting dimmer inside his room and only shafts of light emitting from the outside illuminated the large vacant space around him. Watanuki had to blink several times to clear out the haziness of his vision.

“Kimihiro,” the person said as he leaned in closer to once again place his hand on his forehead. Watanuki finally smiles when he realized who it was by the sound of his voice and the outline of his figure in the dark, but then Watanuki brought himself to a sitting position afterwards because he was surprised about his presence after all.

Rising abruptly made him wince. Quick as ever, Syaoran was already next to him so he could wrap an arm around his waist to help him sit up, and the warmth of his own body against Watanuki was so comforting that the dream seer immediately started crying. He stifled it, though, and prayed Syaoran wouldn’t notice. He shouldn’t be doing that. He has never done that and never had a reason to, not in front of this other man. But of course he noticed.

“Did I hurt you?” Syaoran was still cradling him with one arm. His other hand was resting on Watanuki’s knee. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

“I don’t know…” Watanuki was tempted to push him off and go to a corner but his body felt too weak to do anything but lean against Syaoran. “I don’t know if I will ever be okay,” he rambled. “I’ve messed up, Syaoran-kun. I—fucked up.”

The hand gripping him by the waist tightened but Syaoran said nothing.

“Why are you even here?” Watanuki asked. He sounded like something is clogged in his throat, making each word ache.

“Mokona—well, my Mokona told me that yours is in deep sleep,” Syaoran answered as he slowly disentangled from Watanuki. “How long has it been since he was like that? My Mokona was worried and that’s why we came here.”

“Oh,” Watanuki tried not to sound disappointed. “That makes sense…”

An interval hung between them, a silence so uncomfortable that Watanuki had to close his eyes again and focus on not being too aware.

“What happened to you?”

Watanuki felt some movement and knew that Syaoran was going to reach out for him. He anticipated it and coiled back, slapping the tentative hand away. He instantly regretted it and covered his mouth with the other hand and tried to keep himself very quiet as he sobbed out again.

“Kimihiro?!” Syaoran sounded… hurt? Lost?

“P-Please,” Watanuki gulped and then continued. “Y-You shouldn’t be here. If you’re worried about Mokona, then I can assure you that I-I am trying everything and that I—it’s my fault, I know, and I’m trying to f-fix things now. I really am. I’m sorry, Syaoran-kun. I’m so sorry about Mokona. About…all of it.”

“Kimihiro, tell me what is happening to you,” Syaoran tried to reach out again and this time Watanuki welcomed the hand on his shoulder. “I want to understand. I really do. I know you’re in pain. That much is obvious. I—feel some of it, you know. I don’t know where it’s coming from but after a while I just couldn’t bring myself to ignore it anymore. That’s why I also came here. I knew something must be—”

Watanuki cut him off. “You are the last person I want to cause grievance because I know you have your own troubles—”

“Nonsense!” Syaoran removed his hand on Watanuki’s shoulder and this time caught his hand instead. He tightened his hold on him. “I will only become troubled if you lie to me which is what you’re doing right now. Help me understand why.”

Watanuki stared into the darkness at first before resting his dim eyesight below, where their hands are touching and then he fearfully interlaced his fingers with Syaoran’s. He said nothing for quite some time. The other man just waited patiently.

“I failed,” Watanuki spoke up at last but he was barely audible. It didn’t matter though since Syaoran was close enough to catch every word. “I failed you. I f-failed _us_ ; what we were supposed to be when we made those wishes. I-I was arrogant and felt so sure I was doing something that I feel I was entitled to. I chose to live, yes, and yet I only did it because I want to punish myself. So I tested the people closest to me, drove them to the edge before I cut off ties with them. And I tempted certain customers to indulge in the most horrible of wishes. I even—”

He started sobbing again but managed to control it long enough to confess, “I had this woman here weeks ago and she was a….she was a rape victim and she wanted her rapist dead and…she offered—she offered her—”

Syaoran had squeezed his hand then. It took him some time, but Watanuki was still able to continue. He must. His voice sounded rushed, though, as if afraid to dwell on the words too much. “She was pregnant and she offered the child’s soul in exchange for revenge. I granted her wish. And the worst part of it all is that I—gods, I fed that innocent soul to a Jorougumo. And then I—”

Syaoran never said anything and he stayed beside Watanuki as he kept sobbing. Their hands are clutching each other so tight it would have been impossible to separate them now. Watanuki’s head is throbbing and his chest is spun so tight it could burst. And still, Syaoran stayed right there beside him. He never let his hand go.

It took another several minutes before Watanuki could speak again and his voice was muddled with torment when he did.

“It’s a good thing,” he said, “that I don’t remember anything about my past—or my parents. I wonder—gods, I dread to wonder—what they will say to me if they could see me now. They probably can’t and would never forgive me…how could they? Look at me!” he grabbed Syaoran roughly by the shoulder now and stared into his face. There are shadows dancing on the other man’s features which Watanuki could barely make out because of the minimal light inside the room.

“I’m not supposed to be here, right?” he was shouting now, “I should have never been born! I don’t deserve it. I’m not a human being! I’m not real! I’m—”

And that’s when Syaoran crashed into him as he wrapped both strong arms around his quivering frame. Watanuki felt the heat and wetness in the other man’s cheek as they locked arms. It literally took his breath away, silencing him.

“You are loved _,”_ Syaoran whispered, his voice hoarse, but he sounded so certain.

He ran his fingers through Watanuki’s hair in all tenderness and added. “There is nothing more real or human than to be loved.”

“Syaoran-kun—”

“Hush, Kimihiro,” he held him even tighter now. “It’s time you stop attacking yourself for once and learn to be your own friend.”

“I’m—” Watanuki couldn’t finish whatever excuse he may have for that. There simply isn’t anything left anymore. He just squeezed his eyes shut.

“Don’t you know?” Syaoran was asking him, his voice trembling and more honest than Watanuki has ever heard before. “Because I know you do. And if you don’t then you should.” He loosened his hold around Watanuki so he can look at him.

In spite of the dim lighting, Watanuki could see Syaoran’s kindness outpouring in the lingering gaze he rewarded him with. “There are things that people have done and will do all over again for the sake of you—of us. We should honor that.”

“I know,” Watanuki tried to smile but failed. Still, he wasn’t going to be afraid anymore. “I want to change my future, Syaoran-kun. I want to live.”

Syaoran just nodded as he ran a hand through Watanuki’s hair. He had been crying so Watanuki cupped his face and rubbed his thumbs across his cheeks to wipe away the stains of tears. Afterwards they embraced again like the estranged family that they are. Watanuki breathed out and as his chest expanded, the needles that have been puncturing his lungs for days now seemed to have melted until there was nothing left but his heart against Syaoran’s, matching in beat and purpose.

"Then please," Syaoran whispered into his ear, "Live."

Watanuki knew that at some point Syaoran will have to let him go. He must. He should. But as he wrapped his own arms around the other man, Watanuki fiercely wished that Syaoran never will.

 

 

 

  **TO BE CONTINUED...**

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **"Never be cruel or cowardly. And when you are, remember to make amends."** ~Twelfth Doctor, _Doctor Who_


End file.
